The Shadow Man (13 page)

child fears of death and dying destroyed in that instant by his father’s firm touch.

Winter hung near the end of the reception line, following the service, waiting for a moment when he would have more than a second, because he wanted to do more than simply murmur a few words of solace and head off. As the gathering thinned and he saw the young attorney start to search for his wife and children, he stepped forward.

‘Mr Millstein, I’m Simon Winter. I was one of your mother’s neighbors …’

‘Of course, Mr Winter. My mother spoke of you often.’

‘I am sorry for your loss …’

‘Thank you.’

‘But I was wondering, have the police—’

‘They say they’re making progress, and that they’ll keep me informed. You were once a policeman, true? I seem to remember my mother—’

‘Yes. Here in Miami. I was a detective.’

‘My mother spoke highly of you. She spoke highly of all her neighbors. What was your specialty?’

‘Homicide.’

Murray Millstein paused, as if measuring the weight of Simon Winter’s one word response. He was a short man, slight, but with a wiry appearance, like a distance runner, and an alertness that seemed to speak of attention to detail. The old detective thought that whatever tears Murray Millstein was destined to shed over his mother’s murder would be dispensed in private. He eyed Winter carefully before responding quietly.

‘The Miami Beach police seem quite capable. Is that your impression?’

‘Yes. I’m sure they are. It’s just, well, is there somewhere

I could ask you a few questions? Somewhere away from this?’

Winter gestured, and as he did, he saw the rabbi and the funeral director moving toward the two of them.

‘We plan to sit shiva back in Long Island. We’re supposed to fly out tonight. Is there something specific you wanted to ask about?’

‘No, I just, it was something your mother said to me, shortly before her death.’

‘Something she said?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which you think has some connection …’

‘I’m not sure. It bothered me. Maybe I’m simply old, with an overwrought imagination. It probably wasn’t anything important. You should trust the Miami Beach police. I’m certain your mother’s death will be a high priority case.’

Murray Millstein hesitated, then responded quickly.

‘This afternoon, I’m meeting some movers at my mother’s apartment. Four p.m. Why don’t we speak then?’

Winter nodded, and the younger man turned away from him in order to address the approaching pair.

Simon Winter was waiting by the cherub in the courtyard of the Sunshine Arms when Murray Millstein, accompanied by a man wearing an ill-fitting tan suit, arrived. The murdered woman’s son took a quick glance around before walking to the apartment door. There was a large red printed sign posted there: crime scene no unauthorized entry. Winter saw the younger man stop, with a key poised in the air. The attorney turned to the man in the suit and said: ‘I don’t want to go in. Just walk through the place quickly, and remember not to touch anything. Then we can talk.’

The man in the suit nodded, and Murray Millstein unlocked the door. Then he turned toward Winter and sat down heavily on the front steps.

‘I wanted her to move into a retirement home. You know, one of those places up in Fort Lauderdale that specialize in elderly people. Especially ones that are alone. A planned community. Twenty-four hour security. Bingo games. A recreation center.’

‘She mentioned that once.’

‘She wouldn’t do it. She liked it here.’

‘Sometimes, when you get older, change is more frightening than whatever threat is out there.’

‘That’s probably true. But it’s only relevant if all those things that are out there don’t show up one night and murder you in your sleep.’ Murray Millstein’s voice was heavy with bitter guilt. ‘Are you the same, Mr Winter?’

‘Yes. No. Who knows? I wouldn’t want to move into one of those developments either. Of course, when I finally got there, I’d probably like it…’

‘That’s the problem, isn’t it?’

‘I guess so.’

Winter sat down on the steps next to Murray Millstein.

‘I can’t go in,’ the younger man said. ‘I thought I could. I thought I needed to. You know, see where it happened. But I don’t want to.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Is there blood?’

Simon Winter shook his head. ‘No. Not really. It’s a bit of a mess. All crime scenes are. Fingerprint dust on the furniture. Signs of people tramping in and out. Your mother would have been embarrassed. She kept a clean home.’

Murray Millstein smiled. ‘She would have been mortified to think that she died in disarray’ Sadness rode every word, despite the upturn at the corners of his mouth.

‘True enough.’

The younger man exhaled slowly. ‘It’s unbelievably hard,’ he said quietly. ‘You have this relationship that’s filled with all the mundane and difficult parts of life. Trying to get your mother to do something she doesn’t want to do. Complaining to your wife. Then having her defeat all that irritation by sending presents to her grand-kids. I knew she was getting old. I suppose I knew there wouldn’t be a lot of time left. And there were so many things I needed to say. When my father died, I saw it, you know. I saw how terrible it was to want to say things and then not have the chance. So I was determined to make sure I told my mother everything I wanted to. But one thing, then another, and I was so busy and time slips away so quickly, Mr Winter. It just races away, no matter what you do. And then it gets cut short because some fucking animal needs ten bucks or twenty bucks so that he can buy himself another pipe of fucking crack or whatever and he thinks it’s worth my mother’s life to get that…’

Murray Millstein’s voice had risen, like a river of anguish flooded by storm waters, until his words were reverberating about the courtyard.

‘Some fucking junkie. An addict. That’s what they think. Shoots my mother’s life into his fucking arm or smokes her future in some fucking pipe. I hope when they catch the fucking beast they’ll let me tear his heart out.’

He paused for a breath of air.

‘Fucking animal…’ he added caustically.

Then he stopped, as if he was uncomfortable letting his emotions fly about the courtyard with such unbridled intensity. He stared out straight ahead for a moment, before turning to Winter and asking:

‘Do you think they’ll catch the bastard?’

‘I don’t know. Their techniques have improved. Maybe.’

‘But maybe not, right?’

‘Maybe not. Most of the homicides that get solved are ones where you know right away who did it. A husband. A wife. A business partner. Another drug dealer. Whomever. When two lives just touch randomly…’

‘It’s harder.’

‘That’s correct.’

‘Did you talk to the detective? The black guy?’

‘Yes. He seemed quite competent.’

‘I hope so. We’ll see.’

‘Keep the pressure on,’ Winter said.

‘What?’

‘Don’t stop with the phone calls. Letters to the state attorney. Write the damn newspaper, the television stations. Keep reminding them. It will help. It will keep the case at the top of someone’s file cabinet, instead of getting buried under all the other crap that starts to build up.’

‘You know about that? Cases that just slip away?’

‘Every detective does. Keep them thinking about this case. Maybe you’ll get some results.’

‘That’s good advice.’

They were both silent for a moment, and then Murray Millstein swept his arm in front of them in a wide gesture.

‘I’m thirty-nine years old and I want to get the hell out of here and never come back. I want this goddamn moving man to finish his estimate and I want to get on a plane and go back to my home

He half turned toward Winter.

‘So, ask me your questions.’

‘On the day that she was killed, your mother came to me. She had been scared. She saw someone from her past. Berlin, 1943.’

‘Really?’

‘Does the phrase Der Schattenmann mean anything to you?’

Murray Millstein paused, then replied: ‘No. Not that I recall.’ He said the name, as if by repeating it he might clarify it: ‘Der Schattenmann? No. It doesn’t ring a bell.’

‘Did your mother talk about her wartime experiences much?’

Murray Millstein shook his head. ‘Do you know much about the relationships between Holocaust survivors and their children, Mr Winter?’

‘No.’

‘They are, uh, problematical.’ He placed a hand over his forehead, as if wiping away some difficult thought, before continuing.

‘She would not talk about the camps. Or her life before the camps. Or her life up until the time she met my father. When he bought her to the U.S., she used to say that was when her life started. Do you know she couldn’t speak English when she came here? Not only did she learn the language, but she was equally determined to erase - just totally and completely eradicate - any trace of her German accent. My father said she would stay up late at night, practicing in front of a mirror.’

Simon Winter shrugged. ‘I see,’ he said.

‘No, you don’t,’ Murray Millstein replied, as if irritated. ‘No German cars. No German products, No German anything. If a story came on the goddamn television about Germany, she shut it off. You’ve got to understand that even if it was never spoken about, her survival dominated our house. Everything my father did. Everything I did, as a child, growing up, right up to the day she was murdered, had some connection, unspoken, unsaid, shit, I don’t know, with what happened to her. It was always there. Always.’

Murray Millstein shook his head.

‘I grew up with ghosts,’ he said flatly. ‘Six million ghosts.’

‘But she didn’t speak of her experiences …’

‘Not to me. But she made a videotape. Last year. For the Holocaust Center library here on the Beach. I haven’t seen it, but she made it.’

‘How did—’

‘I found out because they sent me a solicitation. Fund-raising. They wanted a contribution. I sent them money. I called her up and said I wanted to see the tape, and we argued. Probably the only real argument we’d had in years. She forbade me - until after she was gone.’

‘Will you go see it now?’

‘No. Yes. I don’t know.’

Murray Millstein stood up. The man in the tan suit emerged from the apartment. ‘How much?’ the young lawyer asked.

‘To Long Island. Total contents? Twenty-two hundred, packed up and marked. That’s our special move service,’ the suit replied.

‘Fine,’ Murray Millstein said. ‘I’m sure it’s very special.’ He handed the man the key. ‘It may be a couple of weeks before the police release the apartment…’

‘Don’t worry, Mr Millstein. You just call, and we’ll come right over. I’ll send you a contract.’

The young man nodded, then looked down at his watch. ‘I’m leaving now,’ he said to Winter. ‘You go.’

‘What?’

‘You go see the tape, Mr Winter. Then let me know about it.’

Murray Millstein turned and took a couple of steps into the courtyard before stopping and looking back over his shoulder at Simon Winter. ‘I took German, you know.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I studied German. In high school. We had a language requirement and I took German. She hated that. Hardly spoke to me for an entire academic year. She wouldn’t even allow a German dictionary into the house. I had to do all my studying at school. I got an A.’

Winter didn’t know what to reply. He thought that sometimes the world seemed to accumulate an awful array of pain and hurt and deliver it unfairly, unequally, right on the heart of the unlucky.

Murray Millstein appeared to be thinking hard, for just an instant, before adding: ‘Do you know what it means?’

‘What?’ Simon Winter looked up, almost startled, as if all his thoughts had been suddenly carried into the vortex of a strong wind and he was only brought back to earth by the sound of the younger man’s voice.

‘Der Schattenmann,’ Murray Millstein said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘Do you know what it means?’

Simon Winter shook his head. He had not thought to translate the phrase.

‘It means the Shadow Man.’ He paused, then said: ‘I wonder what she meant by that?’

But Murray Millstein did not wait for a reply. Simon Winter watched the young attorney turn and walk quickly through the courtyard, past the trumpeting cherub, whose music, the old detective imagined, was on this occasion a dirge.

When Espy Martinez arrived at the Dade State Attorney’s Office the morning after Sophie Millstein’s funeral, there were a pair of messages waiting for her: one from Walter Robinson, and the other a summons to meet with the chief assistant in the felony division. She knew instantly that he would want to know what progress was being made on the case, so, despite the fact that he’d marked his note with a red ink immediately she hurried through the warren of prosecutors’ cubicles to her own and swiftly dialed the number for the homicide department at the Beach police.

Walter Robinson came on the line after a moment’s delay.

‘Miss Martinez,’ he said, ‘glad you phoned.’

‘Detective, I’m about to be called in front of the chief assistant and asked to give a status report on the Millstein killing. What can you tell me?’

‘Well, the first thing I’d say is to not worry that much about Abe Lasser. He may look like Dracula, but he’s not really all that terrifying. Especially during the daytime.’

Espy Martinez wanted to smile at the detective’s description of her boss, but instead imposed a rigidity on her words to mask her own nervousness. ‘He’s going to

want to know where we stand. Where do we stand, Detective?’

Robinson started to say one thing, then paused, and asked: ‘Are you getting some heat on this case?’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘Not yet. But I think I’m about to.’

Robinson nodded, though she couldn’t see his head moving. ‘I thought you might. Well, I got the preliminary autopsy and crime scene reports this morning. Here’s what we have. Death was by manual strangulation. Bruising to the larynx and carotid artery areas suggests that the distance between the killer’s thumb and index finger is five point seven inches. There was no sign of sexual assault. Preliminary blood toxicology showed traces of Dolmane. That’s a commonly prescribed sleeping agent. There were some signs that she was beaten about a bit, but I think that happened only in the first seconds. The sleeping pills must have had her pretty knocked out, so much that probably the first thing she was aware of was the guy choking her to death. Not much time to fight back. There weren’t any significant defensive wounds on her hands or arms …’