I made Emma promise that what she saw at the Bauers’ would stay between us. That I was merely looking for my hat, which I thought I’d mistakenly left there, but that Willi and Trudi—or even Mommy, I told her—might get the wrong idea if they ever thought we had gone inside. I hated to manipulate her in that way, my own daughter, but what other choice did I have? The Bauers couldn’t know we were in there. Or Liz, for that matter. There was so much at stake. I couldn’t let what I’d seen come out to them.
And Emma promised she would keep this our little secret. Even if they tried to ask her about it. Even over a bowl of schoggibirnen.
But now what to do about what I saw?
I was sure it was a radio transmitter I had seen in the Bauers’ closet. The meeting in the back room at Marienplatz might have been something one could overlook; seeing the burnt strips of paper with a lot of numbers was something I could never fully prove—and in any case, that evidence was long gone; and the jumble of circled and underlined words in a book could be just random jottings without those shredded numbers—nothing in and of itself.
But a transmitter! Hidden at the bottom of a steamer trunk in their home. On top of everything. That was something the authorities would surely want to know about. Especially with all that was going on in the world between the United States and Germany as our countries lurched toward certain war. That was damning! I didn’t know the law, but I was sure having such a thing in one’s possession had to be illegal. Certainly the kind of thing people who focused on such matters would want to know about.
But just who did I take this to?
My lawyer had already told me to stay clear of it. That this wasn’t his expertise. And I was pretty certain, the precise way I’d come upon it, sneaking into their apartment, if not actually breaking into it—well, certainly breaking into the steamer trunk—wouldn’t sit well with Sam at all. You don’t exactly have the perfect résumé to be pointing the finger at people, about Nazis, he had pointed out to me.
Still, this had to be something the police would want to be aware of.
Or the FBI.
And I also knew it would kill Emma to lose her “auntie and uncle,” and that she might well not understand why—how could a six-year-old possibly understand how people so apparently loving could be trying to do harm. And even though I knew any investigation of them would inevitably be traced back to me—no matter how diligently I pushed to keep myself out of it—and Emma might well hold it against me, as might Liz—there was still a greater duty here that had to be done. Far, far greater than the mere satisfaction I felt at being proven right about the Bauers. Spies were spies. One’s duty to country had to come first, didn’t it? To a cause. What would Ben do, I asked myself? I didn’t even have to answer. Whether the Bauers truly loved my little girl; whether they made the greatest strudel, or had found them Mrs. Shearer, and had been the best of friends and support to Liz when she needed someone at a trying time in her life, when I, her husband, had failed her, I spent the night going over and over what was the right thing to do. If there even was a right thing. If I could simply just look the other way. And let this go. For the sake of Emma.
Or do what I knew was the right thing. The only thing.
And I came up with only one answer.
The 19th Precinct on East Sixty-seventh Street served the entire Upper East Side, including all of Yorkville. It was a dreary, four-story brownstone building with high, arched windows, and looked like it had been built in the worst gloom of the early 1930s, with a dozen or so police cars angled on the street outside.
I went there the following day, and walked up to the duty officer who sat behind the elevated counter. He pushed aside some papers and looked at me.
“I have a complaint I’d like to register,” I said.
“Nature of the complaint?” he replied officiously.
“It’s difficult,” I started to explain. “My wife has an apartment up on Ninetieth Street between Lex and Third. And I think the people across the hall from her might be German spies.”
“Spies?” The balding cop sniffed with an amused roll of the eyes. “Hey, Eddie,” he called to a colleague, “we got more spies.”
“I’m not a crank,” I said to him. “I have a doctorate in European history.” Well, almost a doctorate, I meant. “I’m pretty sure what I have would interest the FBI.”
The sergeant behind the desk looked at me plainly, seemingly sizing me up. “Name?”
“Mossman,” I told him. “Charles.”
“Mossman.” He wrote it down on a pad and pointed to a bench. “Just wait over there.”
He picked up the phone and rang someone, twisted around in his chair so I couldn’t hear him, and then after a few seconds put the phone back on the cradle. “See Lieutenant Monahan.” He pointed upward. “Third floor.”
“Thanks.” I walked up the two flights, uniformed cops and plainclothesman coming down past me, and got to a large bullpen of desks set back to back. About half of them were manned, the rest empty. I asked someone sitting near the front for Monahan’s desk, and was pointed toward the back and a kind of pudgy, ruddy-faced detective with Brillo-like white hair, wearing a white shirt, loose striped tie, and suspenders.
“Take a seat,” he said as I stopped in front of his desk, without getting up or even looking at me. The desk was cluttered. Shelves behind him were stacked with thick, bulging files. “You’re…?”
“Mossman,” I said. “Charles. I spoke to the officer downstairs.…”
“Yes, Mossman,” he said. He finished up some kind of report, then looked up finally and pushed his chair back. “All right … So you live up in Yorkville.”
“My wife lives in Yorkville,” I said. “With my daughter. We’re separated.”
“All right.” He took out a new form. “And you live where?” he inquired.
“In Brooklyn. 157 Powers Street. I rent a room there.”
“A room … So why don’t you take this matter to Brooklyn,” he shrugged perfunctorily, “if that’s where you live?”
“Because what I have to say takes place here,” I explained. He didn’t even react. Just started writing. Hey Eddie, more spies. Did I end up with the most brusque and completely functionary detective in the precinct?
He jotted down my name and address and finally looked up at me, seemingly ready to listen. “All right, Mr. Mossman, you say you have a lead on some German spies. Your dime…”
Though I already had the feeling I was about to be pushing a large boulder up a very steep hill, I took him through everything I knew and had put together, starting with the first times I had met Willi and Trudi, and the kinds of visitors that were showing up at their door, customers, they called them.…
“Hold it a minute,” he interrupted me right away. “I thought you said they’re German?”
“I think they are German. But they claim to be Swiss. I can’t know for sure. They say their family was from Germany, and German is definitely their first language.”
“You realize the Swiss are neutral so far,” he felt an urge to remind me, “in what’s going on over there.”
“I understand that,” I said. I found my frustration starting to rise. “Can I go on?”
“Be my guest. I was just reminding you of the facts.…” He waved me onward. And I continued, describing the word Emma had overheard them using, Lebensraum, which I already knew was way over his head, or at least, way beyond his interest.
“Your daughter’s six, you said?”
“Yes, six.”
“And she’s the one who overheard them using this word?” He rounded his eyes. “Lebens-room?”
“Lebens-raum,” I corrected him. “It means elbow room.”
“It could mean ‘storm the Bastille’ for all I care, Mr. Mossman, ain’t no crime people speaking German. And to a six-year-old,” he added. “So she’s the witness?”
“I’m perfectly aware it’s no crime,” I said. “If you’d let me just go on…?” I told him about the torn, burnt strips I had seen in their kitchen trash, a message of some kind, I was sure. “It could well be a code.” But his interest didn’t seem to peak any higher. “They seem to adore Emma, and my wife isn’t happy with any of this.” I shrugged.
“You and your wife fight a lot?” he asked.
“We used to. But what does that have to do with anything? I’m trying to tell you something important.”
“And this Swiss couple have taken a liking to your daughter?” he said with plodding gray eyes.
“Yes. I was away for a while. She actually calls them her aunt and uncle. But…”
He jotted a note down, then looked back up at me. “You were saying…”
“I was telling you about these strips of paper I found. That it was a message, I’m sure. That she didn’t want me to see. A bunch of numbers. But in a kind of pattern. Groups of three numbers. Like a code. I even think I might have found the key to the code.”
“What makes you think it’s not a telephone number or maybe the numbers racket?” he asked.
“Who tears a message into strips and then burns them?”
“Maybe someone who lost. Happens all the time. Truth is, I can think of a dozen credible explanations. And so far I’m not hearing anything so credible on your end—”
“Look, I followed them one night,” I said, cutting him off. “I know that might not be so kosher. But I did. Just to see where they went. And it was to this German beer hall on Second Avenue called Marienplatz. You know it?”
“No.” Monahan shook his head. “Should I?”
“It’s a known hangout for Nazi sympathizers and organizers up there.”
“It is, huh? And how do you know that?”
“It just is.… Look, you guys just arrested twenty-six of them, for God’s sake. I’m not making this up. I followed them there and saw the Bauers embraced by the owner and then go back to this meeting room, where they were all doing that Nazi salute they do. Sieg Heil-ing. With a Nazi banner on the wall behind them. So for all the effort they’re putting into denying any association with Hitler, here they are being welcomed like heroes at a meeting where they’re all saluting him. Tell me why?”
“I can’t tell you why. Could there be any other possible explanation?”
“Well, I suppose I should mention they were in the beer business at some point,” I said. “That they apparently had a small brewery.”
“Yeah, that was good to mention,” the detective said, “this being in a bar and all.…” He jotted it down. “That all?”
“No, it’s not all,” I said. It was clear I wasn’t exactly knocking him over, and now this next part of the story got even trickier. “I don’t want to say how—at least not right now—but I saw something the other day. In their apartment.”
“And what is that?”
“A radio transmitter…”
“A radio transmitter?” This time his eyes did grow wide. “And you’re sure of this?”
“I can’t be one hundred percent sure, but that’s what it appeared to me. It was about this big…” I stretched my hands about eighteen inches apart, “and black, had what looked like a frequency gauge on it and two knobs. An antenna and a headset. What else could it be?”
“I don’t know what it could be.” The lieutenant shrugged, looking at me. “I didn’t see it.”
“Look, like I told the officer downstairs, I’m not a crank. I was in the doctoral program in European history at Columbia. I’m not making this up. Or trying to waste anyone’s time.”
“And you found this transmitter exactly where?” The detective tapped his pen on his desk.
“In a closet. Inside a trunk.”
He looked up at me again. “Inside their apartment?”
“I told you I didn’t want to get specific on how I found it. Just that I did. And it should be of interest to someone. It’s not legal to have that, is it?”
“I don’t know if it is or it isn’t. No more legal than maybe how you found it. And everything you’re telling me pretty much hinges on the specifics, if you know what I mean? I assume they didn’t invite you to rummage through their belongings. This trunk … it was locked?”
I blew a deep breath out my cheeks, knowing how this was going to play. “Yes.”
“And you opened it somehow? Like with a key?”
I nodded again.
“And you obviously knew where this key was. Where did you say this trunk was? In a closet?”
“In the hall closet next to the front door,” I said. “Yes.”
“In the hall closet. And not in plain view, I assume?”
I took in another deep breath and shook my head. “No.”
Now it was the detective’s turn to exhale. “So you see what we got ourselves here, don’t you? If you got this fancy degree like you say, you probably heard of a thing called unlawful search and entry. Was their front door locked as well?”
“No.”
“It was just what … open?”
“Not just open,” I said. “Kind of cracked.”
“Cracked or kind of cracked?”
“Cracked,” I said. I twisted in my seat.
“But the owners of the apartment…” He consulted his notes. “This Mr. or Mrs. Bauer, they weren’t there at the time, I presume?”
“No.” I cleared my throat. “Of course not. They weren’t there.”
He nodded with sort of a troubled frown and tapped his fingers into a steeple, kind of pensively. “You’re sure it was a radio transmitter though? That’s important.”
“I’m pretty sure. Yes. And coupling it with the coded message I found…”
“You’re the one who’s claiming it was a code,” the detective said.
“And the meeting with the Nazis at Marienplatz…,” I said, adding emphasis, “and this business about Lebensraum … It does all add up, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know what it all adds up to, Mr. Mossman. I’m just listening. So anything else you want to add…?”
“Yes. One more thing. There was a book in the trunk as well. Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle. In German. There were a lot of words and numbers circled and underlined. I think it might be the key to the code I spoke of.”
“Again with the code,” he said.
“Look, I’m laying something out that I think anyone who looks at these things would find troubling,” I said, my voice rising an octave.
“Gimme a second,” the lieutenant said, seeming to grow equally annoyed with me. He made some notes on his pad. “You got dates for all these…?”
“Dates for what?”
“All these things you’re describing. For the report.”
“Not exact dates, no. I wasn’t exactly taking notes. But yeah, I think I can put that together. Or at least close.”
“Good.” He scribbled something again. “That should do it for now. Oh, just one more thing from me.… Earlier, you said you were away.” The detective looked up. “Where?”
I knew it was bound to come up. Sooner or later. And I knew it wasn’t going to make the rest of what I’d had to say any more convincing. “In prison,” I cleared my throat and said.
Now the detective’s eyes really stretched wide. “In prison? You’re on parole?”
“My sentence was commuted. I had a situation. You can look it up. I got into a fight. Outside this bar in Midtown. It was the night of the German Bund rally at Madison Square Garden two years ago. You remember, when all those Nazis got together. Anyway, someone got hurt. Killed. Accidentally. A kid.”
“A kid?”
“Sixteen. I got into a tussle with a bunch of Nazi sympathizers who barged into the bar, and he was just passing by and got sent into a plate of broken glass. I spent two years up at the penitentiary in Auburn, New York, for it. Third-degree manslaughter.” I sat back and let him absorb what I’d said.
“So now it’s kind of making sense to me,” he said.
“What’s making sense?”
“Seems to me you got this thing against Nazi-lovers.”
“What do you mean, a thing? I don’t have a thing against them. Any more than half the world does. At the bar, I’d had a bunch to drink. The witnesses will tell you, this crew of them who barged in, they were an ugly group. Instigating and insulting. I went off. The poor kid just happened to be in the way. It’s all in the trial proceedings.”
“I’m sure it is.” Monahan jotted some thoughts on his pad. Like he had me sized up.
“And this time, if you’re even interested, this time it was all purely happenstance. While I was at Auburn, my wife moved to this apartment in Yorkville. This couple happened to be across the hall. I visit my daughter twice a week. That’s all.”
“Other than you followed them to that Nazi bar and broke into their apartment.”
“I didn’t break into their apartment,” I huffed, my frustration rising now. “They left the door open. And this isn’t about me, Officer. I’m reporting something serious here. The right people should know about it.”
“Lieutenant,” he said, glancing up at me.
“Huh?”
“It’s Lieutenant,” he said, pointing to the nameplate on his desk.
“Yes, Lieutenant,” I corrected myself. “Sorry.”
“So just one more thing.…” The detective tapped his pen on his desk and looked at me. “You still drink?”
I leveled my eyes back at him and looked at him squarely. “No.”
“Not at all?”
“It’s a condition of being with my daughter. So no.”
“Good. Glad to see you’re on the mend. So I think I got all I need.…” He finished scribbling a few notes, tapped the pages together, and then slid the stack across the desk to me. “Look it over and put your John Hancock on it. I want to thank you for coming in and doing your civic duty. That’s how we find these people. People like you.”
The way he said it made me think he would never look at it again.
“Will the FBI even get a look at this?” I questioned. “It’s still valid, everything I’ve said. Whether I followed them or not, or went inside their apartment. There’s still a transmitter there.”
“See that file…?” He twisted around and pointed with his thumb to a bulging file on the shelf. It was maybe ten inches thick, and barely covered what looked like a hundred reports stuffed inside. Maybe five hundred. “People in Yorkville who think they uncovered Nazi spies.”
People who hadn’t spent two years in jail; and who didn’t have a history of drinking, he didn’t have to add.
He chuffed, “If I only had a nickel, right…?”
“No one’s going to even see this, are they?” I looked at my own report, discouraged. Desultorily, I added my signature and address at the bottom of the last page.
“Don’t worry, everything gets reported,” the lieutenant said. “You can take that to the bank. Your Swiss grandparents will be on someone’s desk. The right people. Mr.…” He glanced down, double-checking my name on the report. “… Mossman, right?”