Jimmy Fox - Nick Herald 01 - Deadly Pedigree (17 page)

She thinks I’m teasing, but I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about.

“Oh, of course. What grant?” she teased back, giving a stagey wink and biting her bottom lip as if she’d been caught at something naughty.

His heart raced at the sight of her wet white teeth depressing her luscious red lip.

“I know all about it,” she said. “No sense being coy. Mother has told me about the funding you’re receiving now. She has her pet projects, her own enthusiastic, perhaps impulsive, way of doing things, which sometimes I don’t find out about until the machinery is already in motion. I understand: she’s obviously asked you to keep the grant quiet. So many worthy projects out there. Discretion is the better part of philanthropy.”

Nick decided to nod. Mrs. Armiger was lying to her own daughter about him and his mission. Why? He hated backing up lies not his own.

“You know how older people can be about passing on control to the next generation?” Zola said. “So, when will the book be ready?”

You ought to hear about some of your mother’s other special projects, Nick wanted to say. She didn’t know about the sordid foundations of Artemis Holdings, the company and family history of treachery, bigotry, and who-knows-what-else. She was completely innocent. The playful look in her eyes, devoid of any double-meaning, the bantering, childlike tone of her conversation, convinced him that in life, as in her stock-picking, this beautiful woman yet saw the world as she wanted it to be.

“The book. Oh, sure,” he said, playing along. “Well, you know how these things are. Lots of research, travel, that sort of thing. Maybe in a year, year and a half…”

The lights dimmed a few times, signaling the dawdlers to return to their seats.

“I’d enjoy hearing more about it, Nick. Angus at the Plutarch said your friends call you that. I hope you don’t mind.” And after a moment’s hesitation: “Some of my friends and I are going out after the play, to hit some bars over on Magazine. There’s just so much high culture I can take in one night. Why not come with us? I’ve always been interested in genealogy and would love to hear your thoughts. And bring Professor Kern. The Rotting Fish-heads from Pluto are playing at the Gumbo Club. You’ve heard of them, haven’t you?”

Though he hadn’t, he said, “Got all their 45s.”

Zola caught on immediately to his jesting insincerity. “Well, find me after the play if you’re interested. Keith Richards is supposed to sit in for a jam session…. Did you hurt yourself?”

“Oh, this?” Nick asked, touching his face. “Electric razor malfunction.”

Zola didn’t know quite what to make of the answer. In farewell, she let her hand rest in Nick’s for a delicious moment that felt to him like a lifetime. “Hope to see you soon,” she said.

Shaking himself free of the gorgeous woman’s spell, he searched the lobby for Una, but she was gone.

“I thought you were bringing me a champagne.” Una was pouting. “You forgot me. The story of our friendship.”

“Damn, I’m sorry,” said Nick. “I got mired in a conversation with a bigwig on the board or something at the Plutarch. Time just got away from me.”

“I
know
who she is. Rather pretty, isn’t she?”

“If you like that sort of look, I guess.”

Two or three people hissed them into silence. There was a definite chill coming from Una’s vicinity as they watched the play resolve itself into dancing and marriages–a happy ending that depressed Nick terribly.

In the shadows of the parking lot, Nick gave Una the spoils of his two-day Natchitoches rampage.

A sporty red Volvo pulled up beside them.

“Nick, Una! Come with us, please. There’s plenty of room,” Zola, in the front passenger seat, shouted out to them over the car stereo and the engine noise. Two other women and a man in the back seat clapped, sang to the music, and in general acted silly.

“What do you say, Una?” Nick asked.

“I think not,” she answered, giving the crowded car a look of extreme disapproval.

“No ‘I have to do my nails, hair, whatever’? No ‘I have to get up early tomorrow’? Just ‘I think not’?”

“I think not!” She stalked off toward her own car, with his bundle of pilfered papers under a sweater she’d needed inside, but not out here in the humid warmth. He was relieved to see she was taking his insistence on stealth to heart.

Nick watched her for a moment.
Go with her you idiot. That’s what you need: a good woman, loyal to a fault; a settled life; intellectual companionship for a change–hey, marriage, even. She probably has a simple but scrumptious midnight repast and some excellent wine waiting for the two of you, hoping to take up where you both left off years ago. It will be on your head, Jonathan Nicholas Herald, if she turns into a Miss Havisham
…

Nah!

He piled into the back seat of the red Volvo.

“Don’t worry,” Zola said, indicating the young guy at the wheel, “Donny’s Muslim. Can’t drink alcohol. He’s always our designated driver.”

Donny, however, inhaled deeply from a large joint as they zipped down quiet, narrow Uptown streets lined with parked cars and petrified yellow-eyed cats.

Nick’s couch felt like heaven. It didn’t hurt, either, that Zola was next to him. They were mechanically kissing and pawing each other, both dead tired but too stubborn to admit it. They reeked of bar vapors from the Gumbo Club–where Keith Richards, or his double, had indeed jammed with the band–and the four or five other dives they had crawled through. A cassette tape he must have bought from the band was in his shirt pocket.

He vaguely remembered the last place, a blue-collar bar, all the latest rage among students and the hip crowd. The regulars, old men with grizzled faces, union caps, and unfiltered cigarettes, whose fathers and grandfathers had imbibed there, had huddled at one end of the bar under the television and watched them with bewildered and resentful eyes. The itinerant rakehells were thrown out when Zola and several others, including Nick, started dancing on the pool table.

During their hours together, he and Zola had discovered much to talk about, much to laugh about. They found that they shared a fondness for things out of the ordinary, as well as the typical New Orleanian’s obsession with food and drink. Nick had genuinely enjoyed the evening, and he believed she had, too.

Zola drew back and looked around Nick’s cramped apartment. “I shouldn’t be here. We’re not twenty years old anymore. We adults are supposed to know better than to get involved on the first date.”

“It wasn’t even a date.” He kissed her. “And we’re not as involved as I’d like, yet.”

“Well, I just want you to know that I don’t always do this. I mean, go to a man’s apartment. But I feel I
know
you. After what Angus told me, and what Mother has said. Your life has been so, I don’t know, so colorful, exciting, unpredictable. A lot different from mine. I’ve always been sure where I came from, where I am, where I’m going. I see in you an antidote to that, that predictability. Do you know I even called up the newspaper articles on your dismissal from Freret?…Oh, I’m babbling like a teenager with a crush. How embarrassing.”

“A tired teenager. I’ll get you a cab in a few minutes. But I want to tell you a secret of my own, now: I felt something click, too, that day at the Plutarch. I’ve been thinking about you a lot since then.”

“You could call me sometime. We could…go out for dinner.”

“I’d like that.” He kissed her again and stood up. “Now, that cab.”

“Water!” Zola croaked in an exaggeratedly raspy voice as Nick weaved toward the kitchen to call a cab. “Cold water, I beg of you, kind sir.”

When he returned five minutes later, she was passed out on the couch. He corrected her twisted posture so she would be able to walk later in the day, and went back to the kitchen to cancel the cab. Then he began to trudge toward his bedroom.

He glanced blearily at his desk, surrounded by cliff walls of books and folders threatening an avalanche. He noticed that the mail for the last few days had been stacked neatly, the junk catalogs and sweepstakes offers off to one side of the important-looking stuff. Hawty strikes again!

Through an old pair of glasses mended with Band-Aids, he perused his mail. Bill, bill, credit-card statement, bill, bill, collection agency, last notice, another one…and a thick tan envelope that had seen several previous mailings. A note taped to it read: “Came postage due at the office. You owe me $4.50. Hawty.” The envelope had lots of small-denomination stamps, the kind that fall victim to rate hikes and are rarely used afterward. No return address.

Nick had a vague sense of familiarity with the scrawled handwriting that had directed the package to him. The most recent postmark was Monday–the day after Max Corban had been murdered!

Yes, he remembered now: he had seen this handwriting that day in his office, when the old man had written down his address and phone number, and the name Balazar.

Nick ripped into the envelope.

It was from the poor old guy, all right, probably mailed just before whoever it was got to him. He must have known something awful was about to happen, and wanted the information safe; probably didn’t expect Nick to get there in time. Nick now recalled the urgent tone during their telephone conversation.

He pictured Corban’s street in his mind: wasn’t there a mailbox just outside the house? Yes, of course; two actually. The old man had cheated the murderer of ultimate victory. His envelope was in one of the mailboxes as Nick walked just a few inches beside it.

That was Sunday; the next day, the envelope was picked up.

What Nick found inside was a leftover, deadly bombshell, a long-buried remnant of old hates, like those being dug up in French and German gardens even today.

Looking at the beautiful woman sleeping on his couch, he understood.

“This is all about you, Zola, isn’t it?” he whispered. “About keeping you from ever knowing what she did.”

.

19

N
ick held in his hands–trembling from excitement–a mass of photocopied evidence proving that Zola was indeed of the Balazar family, but the daughter of concentration-camp survivors. They had been part of Hyam’s collateral line–from an uncle who never emigrated–and thus distant cousins of Natalie Armiger.
Had been
, because Natalie Armiger let them die. She had refused to sponsor them in their petition to immigrate to America, in those years of anguish, confusion, and desperation after the WWII.

Nick wondered how Corban had come to possess the documents he found in the thick envelope. There were communications from resettlement and repatriation groups Nick had never heard of, along with the expected ones. The story these copied documents told was vivid and moving. Nick came to understand the motives of the broken old man a little better, too. It wasn’t merely his stock-market losses that had driven him to confront Armiger, though that might have pushed him over the edge: with a single-minded determination and bravery, he was one man fighting an immortal dragon. Nick thought of his own moral waffling and felt a new pang of self-revulsion.

While Zola slept peacefully in the dim light of his desk lamp, he sat down, stuggled to stop his inebriated head from spinning, and pondered the material Corban had died to transmit.

Among the millions of displaced persons throughout Europe in 1946, there were three sick, emaciated young Jews, standing together in a line for food at a refugee camp in Germany. Max Corban, meet Maurice and Erna Balazar. Teenagers, who had seen things adults shouldn’t. All three were from the southwestern part of the country, Maurice and Erna having lived near Baden-Baden. Maurice and Erna had just been married.

Nick learned that Maurice Balazar was descended from Hyam’s uncle, who had remained in Europe; a copy of Maurice’s Nazi-issued
ahnenpass
proved the link.

That love should survive in a human being after that descent into Hell; that, before their bodies and minds had begun to heal, before their thoughts could readily go beyond the next bowl of gruel, these shaved skeletons held hands and were able to love–strange and wonderful!

What a paradoxical species we human beings are, Nick thought: capable of such intense cruelty and such beauty of spirit.

The three refugees became close friends as they slowly recovered their health, more or less, and got a modicum of sanity back. Their bewilderment and grief began to give way to an awareness of their new freedom–and their new dilemma. Should they go to their old homes? Or to Israel, where there was renewed talk of statehood and where they could expect welcoming arms but perhaps no greater stability and safety? Or to the United States, always the beacon of freedom and opportunity? Where? How?

Corban had wanted Nick to know everything, and he’d included personal letters to flesh out the story. Nick felt closer to the old man than ever, as he read far into the morning.

Maurice and Erna missed the ancient towns and the mountains, but, following the lead of the rough-and-ready Corban, they decided to try for sponsorship from relatives they vaguely knew of from family legend, a branch of the Balazar family in New Orleans.

Corban had long before made up his mind; he’d lined up firm support from relatives in New Jersey. Alone, he must have been willing to wait for his friends, but soon he met and married a young woman, and their future called as the months passed and their own cases inched along through the labyrinthine process of getting into the United States. Corban and his bride were transferred to another refugee camp and eventually they made it to the promised land of America; they had their own lives to worry about and were unaware of the growing troubles for the Balazars.

Almost every family brags about a relation who’s made it big, no matter how distant. At first, the Balazars had only a rough approximation of their American relatives’ surname from garbled stories passed down through the generations of Maurice’s family. The ultimate discovery of the prominent and wealthy Armigers of the swanky Garden District of New Orleans must have made Maurice Balazar proud and hopeful.

But the problems for Maurice and Erna multiplied after the Corbans left: the New Orleans family would have nothing to do with them. The State Department and the Review Committees turned down four subsequent willing sponsors in other parts of America; the Board of Appeals reinstated one. The red tape got worse and worse.

According to the documents, the Balazars would endure a succession of displaced-persons camps until late 1951, when they finally returned to their war-damaged town. They entered a protracted legal battle to reclaim Maurice’s family house and property, which had been taken over by Christian neighbors who naturally thought–and seem to have hoped–that the Balazars had gone up in smoke in the concentration camps. A daughter was born in 1958, the same year someone threw a grenade into Maurice and Erna’s rented room, killing them. The daughter miraculously survived the blast. Zola, that daughter, became a ward of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. And things began moving much faster.

There were urgent requests from a New Orleans couple, Jock and Natalie Armiger, to adopt the child. The agency put up a fight, claiming they had refused to shelter the family in the first place. Several angry letters were exchanged. Finally, Armiger found the right price, as she had done with Nick and her other pawns. Had she bought off the right senator or representative? Whatever the reason, with her power and wealth she was able to cut through the deliberate visa and immigration difficulties the State Department and Congress had erected to keep Jewish refugees out of the America–before, during, and after the war. Had she only done so while Maurice and Erna still lived! The adoption was accomplished after just a few more weeks of further wrangling.

Awhile back, Nick had “borrowed” from Freret’s Hichborn Library
The Abandonment of the Jews
, by David Wyman. Quietly, he checked that book now, to make sure Corban’s material seemed genuine. It did.

Nick finally understood what was really driving Natalie Armiger. She had chosen him to tidy up the local past because these records of her European cousins were beyond even her reach. She couldn’t waltz into the State Department, the Red Cross, the U.N., and the Jewish and Christian refugee agencies, to scissor the existence of three people–Maurice, Erna, and Zola Balazar. Three people who, having emerged phoenix-like from the most horrendous conflagration of human history, were now part of probably the most exhaustively documented group in human history. Armiger could do nothing directly about this damning evidence.

Yes, it was indeed damning. Nick read nothing that implicated her in the deadly grenade attack; but her refusal to be one of the required two sponsors for Maurice and Erna branded her as complicit in their deaths. How would Zola react to that? Any parent who loved her child would fear such knowledge; and the Natalie Armiger Nick knew would do anything–
anything
–to stop her from finding out.

Armiger dealt in the possible. As an entrepreneur of extraordinary abilities, she was good at expending the least amount of energy to resolve a problem. Thus Nick’s little scavenger hunt; and probably a similar one on the part of the unfortunate Polish librarian whose life ended in the brackish water of Lake Pontchartrain. No troop of private investigators, no team of hotshot lawyers; way too public. But if an opportunity arose to collect the governmental and agency evidence she lacked, quietly and anonymously, like a cat removing the choice morsels from the garbage at midnight, she would take it.

Armiger was destroying her Balazar past, brushing over the tracks of history so that no one–especially Zola–could accuse her of consigning her own flesh and blood to a tragic death. Everything else was secondary. With a chill Nick recalled what she had said about survival.

When the paradigm shifted, as it did when Corban threatened her with something she couldn’t buy or steal, calling into question the authenticity of her role as beloved mother of beloved daughter, her response was commensurately more drastic.

Which explained to Nick why he was alive, and why Corban and the Polish librarian weren’t.

Natalie Armiger could only be pushed so far, before she pushed back, hard.

The next morning, Zola had left by the time he woke. She too must have had a terrific hangover, but society girl that she was, even in her extreme discomfort she hadn’t forgotten the de rigueur thank-you note. Her “Had a great time. Let’s get together again soon. Thanks,” written on the back of her business card, was very shaky.

After a breakfast of three-day-old McKenzie’s donuts and four cups of scalding coffee, Nick threw on some clothes, and, following Corban’s example, mailed the Zola papers to his P.O. box.