The Passover Murder (20 page)

I laughed. “He’s a very nice person and he was a brand-new detective when he caught that case. You’ll be glad to hear it was Sister Joseph who made the connection for me. She said if she’d killed someone, she’d have dumped the body in Central Park.”

“Woman’s as sharp as they come. Give her my best. I’ll send you a copy of the birth and marriage certificates tomorrow. Now I have to eat.”

I had one more call to make, to Harris White at the Thirty-fourth Precinct. He wasn’t there, and I decided quite suddenly not to leave my name for him. Maybe I could do this another way. I pulled out our collection of phone books and started looking up Gordons in Queens. There were lots of Ms, many of them probably women, and three Morrises. One was an M.D., which left him out. I called the second and spoke to a woman whose husband had died thirteen years ago. Then I called the third.

“Hello?” It was a man’s voice, elderly.

“Is this Morris Gordon?”

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“Shirley Finster gave me your name.”

“Who?”

“Shirley Finster. Iris’s friend. You remember Shirley.”

I could hear him breathing. “You say Iris?”

“Yes. Iris Grodnik.”

“Who is this?”

“I’m a friend of the family.”

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

My heart was going a mile a minute.

25

“How can you get out of bed with such enthusiasm when it feels like the middle of the night?” Jack turned over with a groan.

It was 5:00
A.M
. “When you’ve done it for fifteen years, it’s part of you forever. Don’t go back to sleep or I’ll be forced to use very unpleasant means to get you up.”

“You thinking of pulling out my fingernails one by one?”

“I’ll deprive you of coffee.” I was throwing clothes on as I spoke.

“Anything but that.” He sat and stretched. “We really are going to do this?”

“You bet. I’ll get breakfast.”

We had talked about it last night and he had grudgingly agreed to drive to Queens with me early enough that he would get to the Sixty-fifth by ten, the time his tour of duty starts. Before talking to Harris White, I decided I wanted to see for myself what Morris Gordon looked like, sounded like, acted like. We were out of the house before six.

Fortunately, Jack knows his way around New York as if he has lived in every remote corner of every borough, which he hasn’t. We went in two cars so we could leave in separate directions. When Jack finally put his turn signal on and pulled over to the curb, I got a case of serious butterflies. We had arrived.

The street was filled with old houses with barely space for a narrow prewar driveway between them. Some were New York-style semiattached, some were one-family with an occasional front porch. All had tiny lawns or the concrete that replaced what had once been a small rectangle of grass. I got out as Jack did.

“Across the street,” he said.

It was one of the single-family houses, an unlikely place for Morris Gordon, I thought, unless the house had been converted. We walked up to the front door and Jack rang.

A sleepy-looking woman in a bathrobe opened it and looked blankly at us.

“We’re looking for Morris Gordon,” Jack said.

“Can’t you people wait till sunrise?” she said irritably. “The door on the driveway. He lives in the basement.”

Jack thanked her and we walked around the corner of the house. The door was at street level, and a few windows looked out on the driveway. Jack pressed the doorbell and we heard a loud buzz inside.

“I’m a little nervous,” I admitted. “But I want to do the talking.”

“Let’s see if he’s there first.”

He was. The door was opened by an old man with sparse gray hair, wearing a navy blue terry cloth bathrobe, a two-day growth of beard darkening his face. He looked at us without saying anything.

“Mr. Gordon?” I said.

“What is this?”

“I’m Christine Bennett, Mr. Gordon. We spoke on the phone last night.”

“Who’s he?”

“My husband, Jack Brooks. May we talk to you?”

“What’s this about?” His eyes darted fearfully from my face to Jack’s.

“Iris.”

“You a cop?” he said to Jack.

“Yes, I am.” Jack took his shield out, but Morris Gordon barely glanced at it.

He opened the door and we followed him down half a flight of stairs. “Took you guys a hell of a long time,” he said. “How many years is it now?”

“Sixteen,” I said.

“Sit down.”

Jack stayed near the door, and I found a place to sit on an old wing chair. Morris Gordon sat on a sofa and lit a cigarette. There were ashtrays everywhere, most of them overflowing.

“I don’t get it. What are you doing here?” he asked me.

“I’m a friend of Iris’s niece. She asked me to look into her murder.”

He smiled and shook his head.
“You
found me?”

“I found you. One of the security guards at the oil yards remembered you.”

“The good-looking one with the Spanish name.”

“What happened, Mr. Gordon? Why did you do it?”

“I don’t remember anymore. It was a long time ago.” He blew smoke. His face was pale, as though he didn’t get out much. He was a small man, hardly as tall as I. Even when he sat he looked small.

“It was Passover,” I prompted him. “You drove over to your brother’s apartment.”

“Why not? I was part of the family, wasn’t I?”

“What happened with Iris?”

“She was trying to cut me off. I was just getting back on my feet. I had a job, she knew that, and I had debts. She was helping me out, but she told me it had to stop. It couldn’t go on forever, that’s what she said. Then she made up this cock-and-bull story that she had to go away, her boss was sending her to Switzerland for six months, she couldn’t help me anymore. Did she think I was stupid? She was a secretary. Secretaries don’t get sent to Switzerland by their bosses. She was going to see me the next day, give me a little something, and that would be it.” He stubbed out the cigarette and fished around for another. “Like a parting gift.” After sixteen years it still made him angry to think about it.

I didn’t say anything. The old feelings were building in him, the memory of that time, of that night, resurfacing. I wanted them to break through so that the truth would burst out.

“So I drove over to my brother’s. I hadn’t seen him in what? Forty years or more? He was my brother. It was a holiday. It was a good night to drop in and see the family.”

And try to get on better terms with them so someone else would help him with his debts if Iris wouldn’t. He was a conniver, but on that night something had gone wrong.

“I parked right near the building and I saw her come out of the front door. I was going to call her, but she walked over to a big guy who was standing there, waiting for her, a big, handsome guy. I could see even at night he was like a movie star. They talked for a minute and he pulled something out of his pocket, like an envelope or something, and gave it to her. Then they talked a little more and she left him and walked back to the door. So I called her and she came over to the car.” He had lit another cigarette and now he drew on it and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “I just wanted to talk to her,” he said with a whine in his voice. “I asked her what was in the envelope and she said it was nothing and I grabbed it from her and looked inside.”

He looked at me and I looked back, feeling almost breathless.

“You know what she had?” he said. “It was like a thousand bucks. More. This guy is giving her envelopes of cash and she can’t help her brother out a little?” The anger was fresh and new again. “I drove somewhere, I don’t even remember where. We were fighting the whole time, shouting at each other. My own sister trying to cut me off.” He drew on the cigarette. “So I hit her.”

Jack stirred for the first time, moving closer to where we were sitting. “I have to warn you, Mr. Gordon,” he said. “You have the right to remain silent. You—”

“Forget the TV,” Morris Gordon said, waving Jack away. “I know my rights. I said it and you heard it. It’s done.” He leaned back on the sofa and smoked, but muscles in his face moved and the hand holding the cigarette shook slightly.

I swallowed hard. “You must have been very angry.”

He shook his head. “My own sister.” He looked at Jack. “You gonna take me in?”

“Yes, sir,” Jack said. “You can put some clothes on first.”

Monis tamped out the cigarette and went into the bedroom. I found the phone and called Harris White.

“Chris. What a morning,” Harris White greeted me as I reached his desk. It was hours since Jack and I had walked into Morris Gordon’s basement apartment in Queens, and he was now being held at the station house in his precinct.

“You can say that again.”

“I can’t believe it. I swear I checked out everything.”

“A lawyer I know got Iris’s birth certificate and talked to the hospital where she was born. That’s how I found out about the twin. I found his address in the Queens phone book.”

“I did some digging after you called. Gordon’s been living there seventeen years.”

“So he’d been there a year when Iris died.”

“And he’d spent six months of that year as a night watchman at the oil yards. It’s all falling into place. I’ll be going over to Queens this afternoon to interview him, but I gather he’s made a pretty full statement. You want to fill me in on what you know?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s have lunch. My treat.”

“I’d love to.”

I told him what had happened that morning and everything else I thought would be helpful. Although Wilfred Garganus was long dead, I described what had happened between Wilfred and Iris to explain Morris’s motivation, and Harris promised to keep confidential what the Garganuses preferred not to become public. By the end of our lunch he was showing me pictures of his children, and I was asking his advice on building a family room.

I drove home, knowing I would have to tell Marilyn everything and feeling squeamish about it. An uncle she had never known existed was alive and well and being questioned by the police for the murder of her aunt. Somehow it wasn’t the stuff of a friendly conversation.

There were two messages on the machine when I got home. The first was from Eileen asking me to call back. The second was from Mel and she sounded funny. I called her right away.

“Oh, Chris,” she said, her voice weary, “Grandpa died last night.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, the information making a ripple through my body. “I hope he wasn’t in pain.”

“I don’t think he was. Mrs. Hires found him this morning. He died in his sleep. The funeral will be tomorrow.”

“I’d like to go.”

“You can follow us in your car. We’ll be going on to the cemetery. I don’t think you’ll want to do that. Come by at nine.”

“I will. Will you be home today?”

“Sure. Mom’s taking care of the arrangements and then I think she’ll pick up Aunt Sylvie. She shouldn’t be alone. It’s her last brother.”

I didn’t comment. “I’ll pick up some dinner for you, Mel. I’ll drop it off later this afternoon.”

“Oh, Chris, what a lovely thing to do.”

“I learned about it from good people,” I said.

I drove over to the kosher delicatessen that Mel had introduced me to and bought a little of this and a little of that the way she did. The salads looked wonderful, and their rye bread with seeds had a smell that would drive you crazy. I left with so many things that I needed a shopping bag.

Mel looked pretty washed out when she opened the door, and when she hugged me, we both cried.

“Stay for a while,” she said. “Hal’s gone to pick up Sylvie, and I’d love to talk about something else. It’s so sad. He wanted to see the flowers bloom.”

“Some of the trees have started to leaf out. He probably saw them yesterday.”

“I hope so.” She got up and went to the window. “You’re right. The willow is green and there are some green buds on the other trees. Maybe he did see them. Maybe it was enough.”

We talked for a while, but it wasn’t about other things. Finally I said I’d see her in the morning.

“Stay for dinner,” she said.

“I don’t think so. There are some things I have to work out.”

“I forgot. You’ve been looking into Aunt Iris’s death.”

“We’ll talk about it another time.”

I went home and called Eileen. She wanted to set up a time to meet with Taffy. I told her Friday would be fine and we left it at that. Then I called Shirley Finster.

“In custody?” Shirley said. “You got Morris Gordon in custody?”

“He killed Iris. I talked to him this morning myself.”

“Oh my God.”

“Did anyone in Marilyn’s generation ever know that Aunt Iris had a twin brother?”

“Nobody. Not one person. He quit school when he was a kid. He was a troublemaker, not big trouble, just enough that he was hard to get along with. Nowadays they would say he has low self-esteem. Back then it was an inferiority complex. He thought everyone in the family got better than he did.”

“Did you know him, Shirley?”

“Sure I knew him. They went to the same school as me. Then one day something happened, a big fight with his parents, and he left. We’re talking sixty years ago, the nineteen thirties. It was the Depression. Maybe he had a dollar or two in his pocket, maybe less. Iris was a wreck. Whatever happened, she loved him. I never saw him again after that.”

“But Iris did.”

She took a deep breath. “She didn’t talk about it much, but I think he called her sometimes or wrote her a letter.”

“She was giving him money,” I said.

“I’m not surprised.”

“Why didn’t he go to his brothers or his other sisters?”

“What, and say, ‘Look, here I am after forty years. Can you give me some money now that I’m back?’ This man wasn’t even there when his parents died. He never called to see how anyone was, if they were sick, if he could do anything for them. You heard of the black sheep in the family? Morris was the original black sheep.”

“Before the night of the seder she told him she wouldn’t give him any more money, that she was going to Switzerland and that was the end.”

“No,” Shirley said. “It wasn’t the end. For Iris there was never any end.”

“I guess Morris didn’t understand that.”

“Then he was the only one, let me tell you.”