Stolen Away

“Black is fine,” I said, and Evalyn asked for cream.

Evalyn whispered to me, “Do you think Hauptmann…you know?”

What she meant was, did Hauptmann have an affair with Gerta, as Prosecutor Wilentz had done his best to imply at the trial.

“If he didn’t,” I said, “he’s nuts.”

She made a face and boxed my arm.

Gerta returned with a tray of small brimming coffee cups and some tiny, crunchy sugar cookies.

“I’d like to speak to your husband, too, Mrs. Henke.”

“He be gone till six, at least,” she said. “Working a job in the Bronx.”

Henkel was a house painter. Seemed like many of Hauptmann’s friends were in the construction trades.

“That man Wilentz,” Gerta said, nibbling a cookie with tiny white teeth, “tried to make Richard and me look bad. There was nothing bad between us, Mr. Heller. Richard was always a gentleman.”

“You met at Hunter’s Island?”

“Yes. We all go there for good time.”

“But wasn’t Mrs. Hauptmann away, when you met Dick?”

“I guess. But Anna and me become good friends. We are real good friends. I spend much time with her. I have spend time with her in Trenton; we stay at a hotel, so she can be near Richard, sometimes.”

“Gerta…may I call you Gerta?”

“Sure. Can I call you by your first name?”

Evalyn drank her coffee; it had cream in it, but her expression was black.

“Yes, please—call me Nate.”

“You look Irish, Nate—but your name is German, isn’t it?”

“My people came from Halle.”

“I grew up in Leipzig. Went to school there with Fisch. That’s who you want to know about, right?”

“Yes. He lived in this building?”

“He had one furnished room—thirteen dollars a week; on this same floor. He moved from here, though, in the spring of ’33, to a bigger place, in Yorkville, near the brokerage office where he and Richard would go.”

When she said “though,” it sounded like “dough.”

“Before Fisch moved, Richard would meet him, here, at your place?”

“Yes. This is what give Wilentz ideas about Richard and me.” She made a face; what a cutie—I couldn’t blame Wilentz for any ideas he might have about her. “Richard would stop and have coffee with me, when he come to pick up Fisch. But we were not alone together. Fisch was here, or Carl, or sometimes my sister.”

“Gerta, frankly, it doesn’t matter to me either way, about you and Dick.”

That made her eyes spark. She smiled. “Really?” she asked, and she nibbled a cookie.

“What kind of fellow,” Evalyn said tightly, getting us back on track, “was this Isidor Fisch?”

She shrugged; her breasts under the pale creamy sweater had a life of their own. “He was a liar. A sneaky little shrimp. The only thing he ever told the truth about was he really was sick. He got very run-down. He said his lungs were bad ’cause of years he spent in Frigidaire rooms dressing fur pelts.”

“You never liked him?” I asked.

“He got on my nerves. He always get me nervous, pacing up and down on the floor and looking out this window to see if Richard come or not. He would go away with Richard, but sometimes Richard didn’t come, and he go away alone. I say, ‘Where you go, Izzy, working or what?’ He say he go down to the stock market.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a picture of him, would you?”

“I do,” she said. “A snapshot from Hunter’s Island. You can take it. I don’t look so good in it, though.”

“That’s all right,” Evalyn said, and smiled sweetly.

Gerta got up and I watched the cheeks of her ass moving like pistons under the black skirt as she made her way across the tiny, tidy living room and Evalyn kicked me in the shins under the table.

“Do you believe her?” Evalyn whispered.

“About the affair?”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t matter. If every man who wanted to sleep with Gerta was a kidnapper, no baby in this country would be safe.”

Soon Gerta was back, and the picture of Fisch revealed a dark-haired, acned, jug-eared, smirky Jew in his twenties; bow tie and tweed sportcoat. Even in a still photo he looked like a cocky little smart-ass. In the photo, Gerta, cute as a button but not as cute as in real life, sat behind him and leaned forward, her hands on his shoulders.

Evalyn was looking at the picture. “You seem friendly enough with him here.”

“He was fun, at first. His English was the best of us all. Had a swell line of bull. But even back in the old country, as teenager, he was in the black market. And here, with his schemes, he took fifteen hundred from my Carl’s mother for this pie company that never was, and another almost three thousand from her for invest in furs.”

“That’s a lot of dough,” I said.

“People’s life saving,” she said bitterly. “And my mother, he get from her four thousand.”

It sounded like “t’ousand.”

“And he got some from Erica, too,” she said, “how much, I don’t know.”

“Erica?” Evalyn asked.