Breaches & Betrayals, page 1
Breaches & Betrayals
Collected Stories
Elizabeth Zelvin
Table of Contents
The Man in The Dick Tracy Hat
Girl Feeding Birds
The Saxon Hoard
The Silkie
Choices
Dress to Die
The Emperor's Hoard
A Breach of Trust
About the Author
Bruce Kohler Mysteries
Other Works by Elizabeth Zelvin
Copyright Page
The Man in the Dick Tracy Hat
“Your mommy is a Commie! Your mommy is a Commie!”
My little sister Alexa was crying as she stumbled up the block toward me, no more than a couple of houses ahead of the pack of jeering boys. One of them threw something, I couldn’t see what. It hit her in the back. She stopped short, cast a scared look behind her, and wiped her nose on the sleeve of the white blouse Mom had ironed so carefully for her that morning.
“Your mommy is a Commie!”
“Kill the Commies!”
“Go back where you came from!”
Like me, Alexa came from right here in Queens, but what did those jerks know? Their parents read Life magazine and saw Senator Joe McCarthy on the television and believed every word. Lumpenproletariat, my dad called them. Lumpen was a good word for them.
One of Alexa’s oxfords had come untied. She tripped and went down on one knee. With a roar, I swung into action. I’d been mowing our postage stamp of a lawn, cursing under my breath at my dad for making me do it and at the same time kind of enjoying the clacking of the blades and the clean smell of fresh-cut grass it threw up. Dad had told me I’d be sorry if I took my hands off that lawnmower before the whole lawn looked like it had a crewcut. But as I charged the Lumpen, swinging the lawnmower around my head like one of those medieval clubs with the spikes sticking out of it, I wasn’t doing it for my dad. The mean kids took one look at me and took off screaming.
“Gary!”
Alexa flung herself at me, and I fielded her with one arm while I laid down the lawnmower, noticing that my other arm was trembling. The missile that had hit Alexa was a clod of dirt, but the one the biggest kid had dropped when they ran was a rock as big as a softball. As I hugged her and fished out my handkerchief, still smelling of Mom’s ironing, to mop her smeary face, I was thinking that I was glad I’d sent away for those weights and practiced lifting them secretly in my room. I hadn’t been planning on twirling any lawnmowers. I just wanted to be strong enough to punch my dad out next time he laid a hand on Mom.
“Gary?”
“What, peanut? Here, blow.”
She honked into the hanky, sounding so much like Clarabell on Howdy Doody that she giggled and even I cracked a grin, though my hands were still shaking.
“What is a Commie?”
“It’s what ignoramuses like those boys call Communists.”
“But what is it?” she persisted.
“It’s hard to explain,” I said. “The government says it means you don’t care about America, so they made it illegal.”
“Those boys are stupid!” Alexa said. “Of course Mommy cares about America. She’s always talking about democracy and how everyone should have a social consh—what is it again?”
“Social conscience.” I pushed back the strand of brown hair that kept flopping in her eyes. “Well, yeah. People like Mom who think Communism is okay say it’s all about social conscience. That means caring what happens to people who are poor or get treated badly when it’s not fair.”
“Like the Negroes?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s that other word Mommy likes? I-something?”
“Idealism. It means acting as if you believe that bad things can get better. Come on, peanut, let’s go in for supper. It’s hamburgers, with chocolate pudding for dessert.”
“I love hamburgers and chocolate pudding!” Alexa handed back my sodden hanky and started skipping up the path. When she reached the steps up to the porch, she stopped, one foot poised in the air as if she were playing potsy. “Gary? Is Mommy a Commie? I mean a Communist?”
I caught up with her and crouched down so I could look her in the eye.
“Alexa, listen to me. This is really, really important. Never ever ask Mom or Dad or anybody else that question. It could make something bad, something horrible happen to our family.”
“But I can ask you, can’t I? Is she?”
“I don’t know.”
And that was the truth. I had to keep a secret I didn’t even know. I was glad Alexa was only six and didn’t have that burden, though sometimes carrying it all alone weighed so heavy on me that I wanted to scream and punch something hard and unyielding. There were moments when I hated Dad, whose idealism included union organizing and ranting about the hateful Jim Crow laws in the South but not keeping his hands off Mom when he lost his temper. But I never told anyone about that either. I didn’t want us to end up like the Rosenberg kids, whose parents were convicted of selling secrets about the atomic bomb to the Russians and sentenced to the electric chair. The younger Rosenberg boy was only six, the same age as Alexa. It made me sick to think about. A lot of people, including Einstein, said it was a witchhunt and they couldn’t prove they’d done it. Mom said, Would it be so terrible if the Russians had the bomb? With America the only country that had it, a quarter of a million people died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. We’d already won the war, so they didn’t have to do it. Maybe if everybody had the bomb, she said, they’d all be too scared to use it, too scared of setting off World War III. Maybe that was the only way we’d ever have world peace.
*
The first time I noticed the man in the Dick Tracy hat, I was shooting hoops with some of the guys in the junior high playground after school. He was smoking a cigarette outside the chain link fence. He wore a trench coat with the collar turned up, and he was kind of hunched up and half turned away, as if he wasn’t really watching us but had only stopped to light his cigarette. But half an hour later, he was still there. My friend Buzz, who was a bit of a cutup, made a stupid joke about how he should have been there earlier, during gym, when he could have gotten a load of the girls in their blue gymsuits. This other guy Sluggo, who had gotten interested in girls earlier than the rest of us, said forget it, you couldn’t even see which girls were developed under those ugly gymsuits. But we stopped and stared at him a while. The man pretended not to notice, then looked at his watch, as if he wanted us to think he was waiting for someone.
“Now he’s gonna hold it up to his ear,” Buzz said. “Then we’ll know he really is Dick Tracy.”
Just then, the man sort of shook his wrist, frowned at the watch, and did hold it up to his ear. I guess he wanted us to think it had stopped and he was wondering if it was broken. We all cracked up.
“Hey, why don’t we ask him where he got his wrist radio?” Buzz said. “Maybe we could send away for one.”
I didn’t think he was much of an actor. I couldn’t imagine why he wanted to ogle a bunch of boys. In spite of the hat and trench coat, he didn’t look particularly scary. For one thing, he was short. The coat hung down halfway to his ankles. My mom would have had it off him and turned that hem up in a minute. I figured he was harmless.
“Hey, c’mon, let’s play,” Sluggo said.
We turned back to the game, and I forgot all about the man. By the time we were sweaty and panting and ready to quit, he was gone. Ordinarily, I would have walked home with Buzz, who lived right around the corner from me. He had a nice normal family, and I guess he would have been my best friend if I had had one too. But I wanted to practice my jump shot, so I told Buzz and the other guys to go ahead without me. I fooled around for another twenty minutes or so, then tucked the ball under my arm and headed out of the playground.
“Hello, Gary.”
I must have jumped a foot. It was the man in the Dick Tracy hat. He smelled of cigarettes and Aqua Velva.
“Who the hell are you?” It came out squeakier than I wanted it to. My heart was thumping. “How do you know my name?”
The hat tilted as he squinted up at me under the brim. I had an inch or so on him, even though I hadn’t had my growth spurt yet.
“We know all about you and your family, Gary.”
“You leave my family alone!”
“I don’t want to hurt your family.” He smiled. “I’m on your side, Gary.”
I could feel my face turn red. My fists bunched so tight my fingernails dug into my palms.
“Shut up, you little pipsqueak! Scram! I don’t have to talk to you.”
“Oh, but you do, Gary.” He shook his head sorrowfully at me. Maybe he was a better actor than I thought, because he sounded like he meant it, when I sure as hell knew he didn’t. “I know you don’t want anything to happen to your family.”
“What do you want?” I knew I sounded sulky. I hated him, but I didn’t dare not listen. I didn’t want my dad blacklisted so he couldn’t get a job. I didn’t want my mom arrested like Ethel Rosenberg.
“There’s nothing to be scared of, Gary.”
I ground my teeth. He couldn’t scare me! Bullying a kid, that was just his speed.
“All you need to do is answer a few questions,” he said.
“I take the Fifth!” I said quickly.
My parents and their friends knew a lot of people who had been dragged up in front of Senator Joe McCarthy and HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee. McCarthy
would wave a paper around, claiming he had a list of Communist Party members and all he needed from them was confirmation. The ones who refused to answer any questions, who pleaded the Fifth Amendment, were their heroes. Mom told me some of them had done no more than go to a rally back in the Thirties or sign a couple of petitions protesting some kind of government injustice. She despised McCarthy for trying to trick people into betraying their friends. When I asked if any of them actually were in the Communist Party, she got mad at me and said it was a matter of principle.
The man in the Dick Tracy hat chuckled.
“A chip off the old block, I see,” he said. “But you’re not under oath, Gary. You’re not in front of HUAC here. We’re just a couple of friends talking things over.”
“You’re not my friend!”
“Oh, but I want to be,” he said. “I tell you what, Gary. I’ll ask you just three questions, three simple questions, and then I promise I’ll go away.”
I knew enough from listening to Mom and Dad that the best time to take the Fifth was before you’d answered a single question. Once they had you on the record, they could lead you on from question to question until you incriminated yourself. But I couldn’t help wanting to know what questions he would ask. I didn’t have to promise that I’d answer. He hadn’t promised to go away for good. If he thought I wasn’t smart enough to realize that, that was just too bad. I could cheat if he could.
“Ask,” I said.
“Good boy,” he said. “Here’s the first question, Gary. Have you ever heard your parents talk about ‘the Party’? Not a birthday party or anniversary, just the Party.”
How stupid did he think I was?
“Ask your next question,” I said.
I was afraid he might insist on an answer first. Even a simple No could get us into trouble. But he didn’t.
“Tell me this, Gary. Do your parents have a group they meet with regularly? They’d call it a cell or maybe a study group.”
That was a smarter question. Mom called it her study group. I’d heard my Aunt Ceil and my Aunt Abby, who just voted Democrat, say they didn’t understand why Mom considered that bunch of women her closest friends, when they weren’t even family.
“Well, Gary? Does your daddy belong to a cell? How about your mommy?”
I hated that he kept saying my name. And I hadn’t called them Mommy and Daddy since I was Alexa’s age.
“What’s the last question?” It came out sounding almost as pugnacious as I wanted it to. I wished I had a lawnmower to swing at him. I wanted to hit him, even though he could probably wipe the floor with me in a fight. But I wouldn’t hit anyone with my bare hands, no matter how angry I got. I didn’t want to be like Dad.
“It’s another simple one, Gary. Do your parents happen to know a couple named Julius and Ethel?”
He really thought I was a moron. You’d think the government could check up on my grades at school and the results of my IQ test. Maybe he was the kind of grownup who thinks all kids are dumb.
“Three simple questions, Gary,” he said, “and then I’ll leave you alone. Are your parents in the Party? Do they belong to a cell? And are they friends of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg?”
“You asked your questions!” I yelled. “I didn’t say I’d answer! Now go to hell!”
I shoved the basketball into his stomach as hard as I could, smack into the belt buckle on his trench coat, and ran.
The next morning, when I came out to leave for school, I found the ball sitting on the porch.
*
Mom and Dad had a terrible fight about whether to take Alexa with us to Union Square the day of the Rosenberg execution. A lot of their friends were going. Pete Seeger would be there. I didn’t know if he would sing, but even if he did, it wasn’t going to be any fun. I didn’t have a choice. Dad told me I was going with them, and Mom wrote me a note for school saying I had a cold. She said I needed to bear witness to what she called judicial murder. I was two years older than the older Rosenberg boy.
“If those poor children can live through this day, so can you,” she said.
But she thought Alexa was too little. She even shouted back at Dad, which she hardly ever did. He bunched up his fists, his face turned red, and I could see he wanted to hit her. He managed not to. I bet he didn’t want their friends to see her with bruises on her face. They let Alexa go play at a friend’s house after school. Mom told the other little girl’s mother that they had to take me into the city to the dentist.
Dad was simmering with temper the whole way there on the subway. What happened in Union Square didn’t help. There must have been five thousand people packed together, waiting for the news. It was a beautiful June day, with fresh green leaves on all the trees and squirrels playing tag up and down the trunks and along the branches. You never saw a more miserable group of people on a sunny day in the park. Everybody was hoping for a last-minute reprieve. Even the Pope asked the government to reconsider the death sentence. But just before sunset, the news came through that they were going through with it. A huge groan went up from the crowd, including me. My throat was knotted so tight I could hardly swallow, and my lungs ached. I didn’t want to cry, but things got kind of blurry for a while. I kept thinking about those kids, one younger than me and the other Alexa’s age, going to sleep tonight knowing both their parents were dead. I didn’t think it would matter to them whether the reason was idealism or social conscience or punishment or just because Joe McCarthy needed to give America someone to hate.
None of us said a word on the subway going home. Dad was still doing a slow burn, as if one spark would send him up in flames. Mom held my hand tightly, and tears kept rolling down her cheeks. I figured she was thinking about Ethel Rosenberg. I didn’t know if the fluttery feeling in my stomach was still about the execution or because I was sure Dad would blow before the evening ended. The day had been bad enough. It would be at least another two years before I got my growth spurt and could take him on for real. I should have stayed, even sassed him to take the attention off her. But I couldn’t stand it. As she put supper together, slapping the plates around and banging the kitchen cabinet doors, they started arguing in whispers.
“This is what happens when you take risks, Len!” she hissed at him.
“Don’t provoke me, Millie,” he said in a growly warning tone that always meant trouble, like a mad bull pawing the ground before it charges.
I should have stayed. I should have stopped him.
But I didn’t want to know. How much could they expect a twelve-year-old kid to take in one day? I yelled from the living room that I was going to pick up Alexa at her friend’s and got out of there fast. By the time we got back, Dad had gone out, and Mom was lying in bed in a darkened room with a cold compress hiding her face. She said she had a migraine. Maybe she did, on top of whatever he’d done to her. She told me my supper was on the stove. I wasn’t hungry. Alexa had eaten at her friend’s. I told her she could watch TV. I had homework, so I went into my room and closed the door and did it, and that was that.
*
The execution was on a Friday. I spent the weekend trying not to think about it, while Dad kept growling under his breath and Mom went around with tears running down her face, even when she was ironing. On Monday, the man in the Dick Tracy hat was waiting for me when I came out of school.
“Gary! Just the man I wanted to see.” He was still wearing the trench coat, belted and with the collar turned up, although it was a hot day. He pushed himself off from the chain link fence, which he’d been leaning against, without taking his hands out of his pockets. “I’ve got something to show you.”
Buzz and Sluggo were right behind me. Sluggo crowded up around us. He was a big, beefy kid who could do that all by himself. Buzz hung back a little, but his eyebrows shot up almost to his crew cut, so I knew he was curious.
“What’s he got, Gar? Dirty pictures? Let us see too.” Sluggo wouldn’t know a situation if it bit him in the behind.
Dick Tracy looked at me, waiting for me to handle it, as if the situation wasn’t all his fault in the first place. I bet he was laughing behind that deadpan face of his.
“Am-scray, both of you,” I said. “None of your business.”
