The Last Witness (35 page)

Clunk. Clunk. Clunk
.

Jack didn’t know how many steps he had climbed, but there must have been one for every year of his life – even more than that – and the relentless sound of feet bounding up the stairs was getting louder and louder by the second. Jack stopped again.

“Look,” he said, “I don’t know who you are or what you want but I can’t do this anymore. This is way too hard for me. Thank you for the free ticket but I’ll have to come back another time.”

He turned around only to find a hand planted on his shoulder.

“You’re not going anywhere old man,” said Creeley. He pointed up the staircase and then he placed both his hands on Jack’s shoulders. “Keep going.”

Jack bit his lip. “It’s going to take me a long time to go up there,” he said. “I don’t want to slow you down.”

“That’s all right. We have all the time in the world you and me.”

Back they went trudging up the staircase. One step at a time. Jack constantly clunking with his cane, Creeley edging him on.

Finally, mercifully, after what seemed an eternity, they were at the top. Inside the crown of Lady Liberty’s head. There was a small, circular platform with room for maybe ten people at most, a handrail around the edge, and narrow openings to look through. There was nothing in them but air. Each opening was big enough for a person to pass through. A small person. Like Jack.

“What do you want?” said an exhausted Jack. “Are you going to throw me out? Is that it?”

Creeley just smiled.

“Now why would I do that? That wouldn’t be very smart. No. You see I brought you here because you always wanted to go up the Statue of Liberty. It makes you feel like an American and you are an American, aren’t you? Of course you are. But that was a long climb and you’re an old man. You shouldn’t have done it but you’re stubborn. It was too much for you. You collapsed. I called for help. When they arrived it was too late.”

Creeley shrugged.

“You’re the one who sent me that letter,” Jack said. “It was signed with a snake. Like the snake on your arm.”

Creeley nodded.

“And you painted that swastika on my door. Didn’t you?”

Creeley said yes. He said how easy it was to get into the building. He laughed. Then he stopped laughing.

“I know about the girl,” he said. “The teacher. She got what she deserved.”

If his heart was telling him what to do, Jack would have stuck that cane of his right down this character’s throat or hit him with it as hard as he could. But Jack was old and he knew he was old. He looked Creeley in the eye.

“What is it old man?” Creeley said.

“I haven’t come this far only to die at the hands of someone as insignificant as you,” Jack said.

Creeley was not a complicated man. He knew when people were in trouble they got desperate. It was always like that. When Coal fought in the ring, his opponents got into trouble and became desperate and desperate people make mistakes. That makes them weak and vulnerable. When the old man Albert Freedman had his apartment invaded he got desperate and wanted to fight and when Creeley’s henchman had the old woman Miriam Abraham perched on the railing of the GW Bridge she got desperate, too. She struggled and kicked. But Jack didn’t look like that.

He didn’t look desperate at all.

“Jack! Jack!”

It was Hodgson. There was a hurried exchange of voices from below. Two, maybe three of them. It was hard to tell.

When Hodgson came to, he had found himself on the bench with his left wrist handcuffed to the railing under the seat, his body twisted awkwardly. He had been tied to the railing with his own cuffs. Embarrassing. Using his free hand, he went through his pockets and found everything there – his wallet, his badge, his gun. Nothing was missing. Then he bent down low to check his watch – a quarter to six – and remembered that the last thing he saw was Creeley leading Jack into the base of the monument. That was enough to get his adrenaline going. He swung his body around and inserted a finger from his free hand under his watch. Then he pressed a button to activate his emergency police line.

“Lieutenant Jack Hodgson. NYPD. Detective Bureau.”

He told them what happened and gave his coordinates. The Port Authority Police were going to send a boat over right away and it couldn’t come soon enough. Jack was alone in there with Creeley.

And so, the third voice from down the staircase was that of a Port Authority officer who had freed Hodgson from the bench and was now coming up the stairs with him. But he was a younger man and much faster than Hodgson. Coal heard them. He stopped and turned back to head down the staircase. One glimpse of the imposing Coal and the Port Authority cop reached for his gun, but Coal was too fast. With a lightning move he kicked the gun away, and a second later his black, leather jackboot was in the man’s face. There was a crunch and a gasp, and the young cop fell back head first over the spiral staircase, crashing to the metal steps below.

Hodgson was trudging up the stairs behind him and figured something bad just happened. Then, the moment he laid his eyes on Coal, he knew this was the person who had handcuffed him to the bench. So now it was one big man against another, but there the similarity ended. Hodgson was slow and fat, while Coal was a machine of muscle and split-second reflexes.

It wasn’t a good place for a gun, not a spiral staircase with twisting metal and the chance of a ricochet, so Hodgson reached for his pepper spray. He would spray Coal in the face, but again Coal was too quick. His arm came out of nowhere and knocked the little canister away, and with his other hand he plastered Hodgson right in the ribs. If they had been on level ground and not a spiral staircase, Coal would have solid footing and would follow with a kick to the head. That would have finished Hodgson for good. But the shot to the ribs was enough. The wind knocked out of him, Hodgson went down in a heap.

Coal turned around and started springing back up the staircase. A few seconds later he was at the top with Creeley and Jack. The three of them.

Jack was on his own.

Creeley wasn’t much to look at. He was even shorter than Jack and just as lean. No wonder no one had noticed him on the ferry. Standing next to the imposing Coal, he had looked
smaller still. But Coal? He was all muscle and thick. Like a rock. Jack caught something else about him, too. He wore a cross around his neck.

“My friend Coal used to be a Navy Seal,” Creeley said. “He knows how to kill someone and make it look like natural causes.”

Jack was in trouble. It wasn’t the first time. Back in the ghetto when he was a little boy his life was in danger every day. He was only three, four years old then. If the Germans found him, that would have been it. But he had help. His parents. And at Auschwitz things were even worse. Any time, any hour, they could have sent him to the gas chamber. Or shot him. It could have happened the day he arrived. Or at the selection line by the railway track. Or when they made him drop his pants and the SS examined him. It could have been Mengele. He had ample opportunity to kill him whenever he wanted. No one would have known. Or cared. And who was there to help him? Jerzy? Not really. He showed him the ropes maybe. But Jack had to help himself.

“What do you want?” said Jack.

“What do I want? To get rid of people like you. You’re not the first but you are the last. After you this will be all over.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t? Come on old man. We’ve been getting rid of people like you for years. We find them and hunt them down and make it look like an accident and most of the time it does. Albert Freedman was on my list and I took care of him. It was messy but I took care of him. Miriam Abraham was on my list too and I took care of her. She was easy and so was Shirley Rosen. I know all the names.”

He took out his mini.

“And you’re the last one. The last one on the list. After you there won’t be any list.”

He touched the little screen and Jack’s name appeared. One tap and it was gone.

“What list are you talking about?” said Jack.

“The list … with the names … Albert Freedman … Miriam Abraham … Shirley Rosen … Rachel Teischman … Lilly Gold. They were all here in New York and Jersey but there were others. Lots of them. Levi Braun in Montreal. Arthur Swadron in LA. Rose Weisbrod in Paris. Rachel Gertberg in Switzerland. They were all on the list and every year the list gets shorter. Now there’s only one name left. Yours.”

Creeley took a step forward and knocked Jack’s cane out of his hand.

“You won’t be needing this anymore,” he said.

The cane hit the floor with a
clunk
.

Jack could figure it out. When it was over, Coal would get out of there and so would this character or maybe this little twirp would even call for help himself. He would tell them he didn’t know anything about Hodgson or anything about Coal for that matter. All he would know was that he was taking Jack Fisher up Lady Liberty as a gesture of appreciation, but in his excitement the old guy expired.

He was a hundred years old.

But back at the death camp Jack was only five. How does a child of five survive when everyone and everything around him wants him dead? By using his wits. His brain. By making friends of his enemies because he had something for them. Something they wanted.

“I have a proposition for you,” Jack said.

“What do you mean?” said Creeley.

Jack leaned against the handrail and lifted his right foot. He shook the heel of his shoe, swayed it this way and that, and then grabbed it with his fingers and gave it a twist. The heel slid open. “Here,” he said and he took out a coin.

Creeley came in closer.

“This is a
chervonets
,” said Jack. “It’s from Russia and it’s gold. It’s worth a lot of money.”

Creeley looked at Jack and back at the coin. “Gold?” he said.

“See for yourself.”

Creeley took the coin from him. It was thick and heavy.

“I can get you more of these,” Jack said. “I have lots of them and they’re worth a lot of money.”

“How much money?”

“To find that out we’d have to go to a bank …”

“I’m not goin’ to no bank.”

“All right. A pawnbroker then. We can go to a pawnbroker. Or you can go by yourself. Why don’t you take this one and find out what it’s worth?”

“Why should I believe anything you say?”

“Why shouldn’t you? Look, these coins are very rare. There’s only a handful of them left.”

“You’re lying to me,” said Creeley.

“Why would I tell you lies?”

“To save yourself.”

“Think of it as a negotiation. How many of these do you want?”

“How many have you got?”

“Look. You see the date inscribed on it? You see how old it is? This coin is over a hundred years old.”

Creeley checked the inscription. “It’s older than you,” he said. “How many have you got?”

Jack put his hand to his brow. “I keep them in a safety deposit box but I haven’t been there in a long time. It’s hard to remember.”

Creeley was playing with the coin between his fingers. It looked real enough.

“It’s from Russia,” Jack said. “It was minted in the 1920s. You see the letters on it? SSSR? You see the coat of arms? That stands for the seven republics of the Soviet Union but later there were fifteen republics. That’s why this one is so rare.”

Creeley was studying the coin.

“A coin like this went for a hundred thousand dollars in an auction,” said Jack.

It sounded like a good amount.

“And you keep it in your shoe?”

“It already saved my life once.”

“How did it do that?”

“Greed is a powerful emotion.”

Jack saw that Coal was staring at the coin, too.

“A hundred thousand dollars?” Coal said.

“Yes,” said Jack. “And I have more of them. But if something happens to me …”

“You keep them in the bank?”

It was Coal again.

“Yes and I’m the only one who can take them out. They won’t let anyone else do it.”

Jack could see what was going on with Coal now and so could Creeley.

“He’s lying,” Creeley said. “We’ll take this one and split it. Half for me and half for you.”

Jack saw his opportunity.

“Don’t be a fool,” he said to Coal. “You do all his dirty work and if something goes wrong do you think he’ll be there for you? He risks nothing and you risk everything.”

“That’s how it is,” said Coal and he was still staring at the coin.

“Think what you could do with a hundred thousand dollars,” Jack said to him. “And that’s just for this one. I have others. A lot of them. And I can get them for you. We’re talking a lot of money here and you don’t have to give him anything. Nothing.”

“What?” said Creeley.

“He doesn’t want to share anything with you. He’ll just pocket the hundred thousand and you’ll go to jail. What’s to stop him?”

Coal looked at Jack and back at Creeley, and then he stuck out his hand. He wanted the coin, but Creeley wasn’t about to give it to him. Not if it was worth a hundred thousand dollars. So Coal grabbed him. He had one hand around Creeley’s wrist and the other on his elbow.

“You’re breaking my arm!” Creeley cried and with all the grappling he dropped the
chervonets
. It went down the spiral staircase. Bouncing from one step to the next to the next.

Cling. Cling. Cling
.

“You idiot! Now look what you did!”

Coal lost it. No one talked to him like that. No one. He made a fist – a huge fist – and hit Creeley square in the face. Creeley went down. He wasn’t moving. He looked like he was dead.
Then Coal turned to Jack and still there was the sound of the
chervonets
bouncing down the steps. It seemed to go on forever.

Cling. Cling. Cling
.

Now it was only Jack and Coal standing there. Just the two of them.

“I see that you are a Christian,” Jack said. “You can still save yourself, you know.”

Coal looked at him.

“Tell me,” said Jack and he was staring at the cross around his neck. “How do you reconcile what you do with being a Christian? You’re Catholic, aren’t you?”