The Last Witness (31 page)

Jack was shaking his head again.

“Christine refused,” said Hodgson.

“Did she threaten Christine?”

“No I don’t think so. You see … judging by the police report … this woman has been on the receiving end of an abusive husband for years. She was scared of him and so were their kids.
Now Jack, there’s more. He’s got this connection to this group. Seems to be a whites only kind of thing.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Jack, this Brett Krust character is a wacko. They went into his data files and looked at everything. I only know what I got from the Canadian police but they found all this material he kept at his fire hall and even more at his home.”

“What did they find?”

“Interesting stuff.”

“Like what?”

Hodgson whipped out his notebook and flipped through the pages. “He saved all these articles going back to the 1900s. He had a library. Stuff written by George Lincoln Rockwell. The guy who founded the American Nazi Party. Stuff from old neo-Nazi organizations. The National Alliance. The Heritage Front. Aryan Nation. And something called the Hammerskins which operated out of Texas. And I’m sure you know after the Great Holocaust of 2029 there was a resurgence with some of these groups and others like them.”

Hodgson put his notebook down. He pursed his lips together, crossing his big arms.

“And one more thing I want to tell you about. There’s this newsletter.”

43

The elevator doors closed and Jack found himself alone. His head, his mind, was all a blur. He felt only emptiness. His little Christine wasn’t just dead, she had been murdered. His mother and father were murdered. His Aunt Gerda was murdered. And so were Zivia and Romek and his baby brother who never even had a name. Murdered. All of them.

And now Christine.

His destination was the dining room on the main floor, but when the elevator doors opened, nothing looked familiar. No yellow-brown wallpaper on the wall. No light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. No red paint on the floor. Everything was a dull grey. He walked into the hall not knowing where he was.

“Where am I?” he said out loud, but no one was there.

He started walking, but didn’t recognize anything. Meandering along, looking this way and that, trying to get his bearings. It was deathly quiet. Up ahead was an opening leading off the hallway and then a wall of glass with a sign. He went to see what it said. ACTIVITY CENTER. The door was open and he looked through it, but it was only an empty room with tables spread about and chairs stacked on top of each other in the corner. No one was inside.

Confused, Jack went back into the hallway. There was another room, smaller than the first, and a sign was here, too. SPECIAL EVENTS. He went inside and it was just like the other one with a few tables and chairs, but no people.

“What’s going on here?” said Jack. “Where am I?”

Then he heard what sounded like thunder from down the hall. Jack followed the noise, which kept getting louder and louder.
Chug-a-chug. Chug-a-chug
. What was it? He felt dizzy, his
head pounding, his eyes blurry. His legs wobbling, he leaned against the wall and used it for support. He put his hands flat against the cold wall behind him and his breathing got heavy. He could still hear it.

Chug-a-chug. Chug-a-chug. Chug-a-chug
.

The sound was getting louder and louder.

Chug-a-chug! Chug-a-chug! Chug-a-chug!

“What is it! What’s that noise!”

He put his hands over his ears and opened his eyes and right there in front of him was a huge swastika on the wall and another one on the ceiling. Yet another one was on the floor. There were swastikas everywhere. Dozens. Hundreds of them. Their black arms twirling. Going round and round and round. All of them together. Like pistons.

CHUG-A-CHUG! CHUG-A-CHUG! CHUG-A-CHUG!

Jack was surrounded by all these swastikas. Stepping on them. Breathing them into his lungs. He started to gag with his arms flailing about and then the swastikas became snakes, their dancing arms turning into serpents with hideous heads at the end. One of them wound itself around his neck and started squeezing the life out of him. He put his hands onto its slithery body and felt the cold, wet scales in his fingers. Then its massive head jutted out right in front of him. Staring him in the face. A cobra. The mouth wide open with fangs ready to strike.

“Help me! Help me!” cried Jack.

The next thing he knew, two women were getting him off the floor. They had blue robes just like the staff at the Greenwich Village Seniors Center.

“Are you all right?”

“What?”

“You fell,” one of them said. “Right here outside the laundry room. Are you all right?”

“Where am I?” said Jack. He looked around, bewildered. “Where are the snakes?”

“Easy now. You got lost. Disoriented. You’re in the basement.”

“The basement? I’m in the basement? How did I get here?”

“You probably came out of the elevator and thought you were somewhere else.”

“The elevator?”

He looked around. There were no swastikas. No snakes. Only bare grey walls.

“You’re Jack Fisher, aren’t you? From the sixth floor?”

“What?”

“We’ll take you to your room and get a nurse.”

44

Hodgson keyed in the name Brett Krust of Kitchener, Ontario, which got him into the Canada-United States Police Information Exchange System. It was a massive but effective databank that for police purposes treated the border between the two countries as if it didn’t exist. And for police investigations it didn’t. Now he had access to Canada’s police data on crime. Everything he wanted. There were no convictions for Brett Krust, but there was one charge of assault against him laid by his wife. It had been stayed. Once she took out a restraining order against him. But there was also something else. Not a conviction or even a charge, but information. He was a member of The United Front, a group based in Atlanta, Georgia with chapters all over the world. There was nothing to show how many members it had, but its publications were printed in different languages – English, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Russian.

The United Front had grown out of the old National Alliance, which was once cited by the FBI as the best-financed, best-organized, white nationalist group in America. But by the year 2010, its membership had dwindled to less than a thousand. After the Great Holocaust of 2029, however, it returned with a new name and new executive. A radio program and an ezine called Voices of Dissidence had a string of regular contributors. One of them known as The Cobra wrote about survival of the white race and how it was under attack. The Cobra said blacks, Jews, Muslims, Orientals and anyone not white and Christian were a problem for America. The Cobra said the Jewish holocaust never happened because it was impossible for that many people to have been murdered back in the 1940s.

“Kathy, I want you to find what you can about whoever writes this column The Cobra for The United Front.”

Kathy Sottario had not endeared herself to Jack, but she was helping Hodgson with the Christine Fisher file. When it came to research, she was a crack investigator who could find things faster than anyone else.

“Have you got a name?” she asked Hodgson.

“No. Just The Cobra. I’ve been through some of the columns but I can’t find a name anywhere. You might start by learning what you can about this group. The United Front.”

“I’ll get right to it, Lieutenant.”

“And if you do get a name see if there’s anything about him in NCIC.”

The National Crime Information Center was the central database for tracking all crime in the United States. The very next day Kathy knocked on Hodgson’s door.

“His name is Jon Creeley,” she said. “No ‘h’ in Jon. He lives in Jersey.”

“Go on.”

“Like you said he writes a column called The Cobra and it’s widely circulated through The United Front. It gets translated into several languages but not once does he ever identify himself. He’s just The Cobra. However he does radio broadcasts and those get translated too so I managed to tap into some of the internal correspondence between the ezine editor in Atlanta and the translator who actually lives in Frankfurt but everything the translator does is sidetracked through London.”

“London?”

“That’s right. Germany has tougher laws than England for stuff like this so I’m guessing he doesn’t want to show any German connection. No German-based 3DE identity code. No German address of any kind.”

“How did you find that out?”

“I have my ways.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

Kathy started reading from her mini.

“NCIC showed three Jon Creeley’s in the state of New Jersey who are still alive and have criminal records. The first Jon Creeley is in his seventies. He’s long retired. Back in the 1990s this guy got convicted of auto theft. The second Jon Creeley is fifty-six, a digital strategist who did six months for possession of child pornography in 2027. That’s all it shows.”

“What exactly is a digital strategist?”

“It could be anything. Someone who adapts data into 3D or builds new platform technologies from older formats.”

“I see. And the third one?”

“The third Jon Creeley is younger than those two. Thirty-six. His occupation is listed as fight promoter.”

“Fight promoter?”

“That’s right. For the past four years he’s been one of the backers of a professional martial arts circuit that stages fights. Bouts. It’s organized and legit but he seems to have his finger in a few pies because he manages one of the fighters himself. A guy named Colton Brock who is known as Coal. He’s the champion. Undefeated. An ex-Navy Seal who once killed a guy in training and got discharged. No criminal charges were ever filed.”

“Hmm. It was military.”

“It was military. But here’s the thing. This Jon Creeley character was known to the police before he ever got involved in the martial arts circuit.”

“How?”

“Jon Creeley had a conviction for fraud in 2026. Another conviction for embezzling in 2028 and for that he got six months. He served his time at Attica and got paroled but later was charged with parole violation but he never did any more jail time. In 2030 there were charges for common assault on a minor … teenage girl … but the charge was withdrawn.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Four years ago in 2035 …”

“Yeah?”

“He was questioned about a homicide.”

“A homicide?”

“That’s right. Albert Freedman was a ninety-five-year-old man who was found murdered in his apartment on the upper East Side. His superintendent found him. Massive trauma to the body. He was badly beaten and was either choked to death with a cane … it was probably his own … or else he died of a snapped vertebra.”

“Snapped vertebra?”

“Broken neck.”

“Nasty. Why one or the other?”

“The police report wasn’t clear about the cause of death. And the file is still open on that one. Nobody was ever charged. The place was ransacked. Money gone. Stuff like that. It looked like a robbery.”

“But no ninety-year-old is going to put up much of a fight. Why did they have to kill him?”

“He was ninety-five.”

“Okay. Why did they have to kill him?”

“I don’t know.”

“So what’s this got to do with Jon Creeley?”

“Well that’s just it, Lieutenant. Jon Creeley … the fight promoter Jon Creeley … was questioned by police. On the night of Albert Freedman’s murder he was seen on the street outside the old man’s apartment. They let him go. There was nothing to implicate him. But there’s more.”

Hodgson leaned over.

“There was a story about the old man who was murdered … Albert Freedman … in
The Jewish Post
. That newspaper is still around. Not cyber. Newsprint. There’s not many of those anymore.”

“No.”

“Well this story said Albert Freedman was a holocaust survivor. A Jewish holocaust survivor.”

“Kathy, give me that again.”

“I said this man Albert Freedman was a holocaust survivor. At least according to this story.”

“And he was ninety what?”

“Ninety-five.”

“When was that? When was he murdered?”

“Four years ago.”

Hodgson did the math. “So if he was alive today … he’d be ninety-nine.”

Albert Freedman, a murdered man, was born one year after Jack. A holocaust survivor.

“I suppose it could’ve been a robbery gone astray,” Hodgson said. “Heat of the moment. Stuff like that.”

“Unless they wanted to kill him,” said Kathy.

“But why would someone want to kill a ninety-five-year-old man?”

“I don’t know.”

45

The taxi deposited Jack in front of the three-storey brownstone on East 88
^th
Street. It was near the Jewish Museum, a few blocks from the Gracie Mansion. The driver offered to help him up the stairs, but Jack said no. He had a cane. Ever since he turned ninety – ever since Eve died – people have been saying that he needed a cane, as if her death rendered him incapable of walking on his own. But now there had been two incidents at the residence, both of them falls, so he had a cane. He tipped the driver, marched up the steps and rang the bell. A woman’s voice said she’d be right down. Jack waited and then there she was. Emily Silver. The woman he saw on the 3DE.

“You must be Mr. Klukowsky,” she said with a smile.

Mr. Klukowsky? Jack had never been called that before. It sounded strange. He returned her smile with one of his own.

“Please,” he said, “you can call me …” He stopped himself and thought about it. “You can call me Jacob.”

“Jacob,” she said, extending a hand. “What a pleasure. What an honor. Please come in. And watch your step.”

She noticed the cane and he saw how she noticed it. Then she apologized for living on the second floor and for there not being a lift. She said she would help him up the stairs, but Jack said no.

“I have a cane,” he said.

“Yes I know you do.”

“But it’s not my cane. It’s society’s cane. I don’t really need it but everybody seems to think a man my age should have a cane so I have it to make them happy.”