Chapter 43
WESTFIELD, NJ MARCH 2001
IT WAS 8:15 IN THE MORNING AND JAKE’S Corolla was in the detached garage set in the rear of the Garwood property on Spruce Avenue. Joe hadn’t seen or heard from Jake for almost three weeks. In their last conversation The Man of Steele said reading the diaries had ripped out his heart and put him in a “mood.” Joe lied when he told his new friend that he understood, wanting instead to smash him out of his funk. It wasn’t as though the diaries dumped new information on Paul’s death in his lap. It didn’t take a PhD in clinical psych like Dr. Headcase to know what Jake’s “mood” was about—for almost half a lifetime, Jake suppressed the fact that his plan for bombing the concentration camp had a snowball’s chance in Hell to succeed.
“The senile old fool,” Joe cursed as he began climbing an outside staircase. Repeated calls to Jake beginning at 6:00 went unanswered. His breath, steaming in the ten degree air, froze the hairs inside his nose. Winded, he paused on the second floor landing, looking up through the railing’s balusters to his target on the floor above. Dragging his leg, Joe counted away the next fifteen steps. Stumbling on the last riser, he crashed against the railing of the third floor wrap around porch.
A weathered, peeling gray door snapped open the width of its safety chain. “Go away. I bought from the Avon lady last week.”
“God damn it Jake, open the door,” Joe said, wanting to shove the muzzle of his Glock into Jake’s face. It was a scenario he fantasized over when he was hunting for the big man. “I’ve got verification of where Paul went down.”
The door closed and then re-opened. Jake, in his black workout shorts and sweatshirt with the sleeves cutoff, barred the threshold with his arm. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s freezing,” Joe said, doing the limbo under Jake’s arm. He stepped inside. This was his first foray into the twenty by twenty apartment that originally was the garret of a one family built by the president of Garwood’s largest employer in the early 1900s. The residence was converted to a three family when Garwood Metal Fabrication went bankrupt during the Depression.
Joe stood in the center of the space. The galley kitchen’s two burner stove hadn’t been updated since the Hoover administration. Doubling as a dining table, a simple pine desk held a computer, a large blue ceramic mug, one box of saltine crackers, a jar of grape jelly, and a three-quarter empty bottle of Chivas Regal. Two pairs of dungarees were draped over the foot of a standard bed Joe thought to be too short for its owner. Flowing wood hippie beads suspended over an alcove next to the kitchen failed to hide the toilet and stall shower. The lone piece of self-indulgence was black leather recliner positioned at arms length from a 13-inch television atop a red plastic milk crate.
“Comfortable…,” Joe said. His eyes widened as he guestimated the number of books sagging makeshift floor to ceiling shelves surrounding the periphery of the room. The titles ranged from Greek and Roman history to Euclidian geometry. “A thousand?”
“Twelve hundred and sixty three to be exact,” Jake said without emotion.
“Paul considered you a Renaissance man, he wasn’t lying,” Joe said, unzipping his coat. If Jake was made of steel, his superstructure was rusting. The man, who looked half his age less than a month before, now looked haggard and spent.
“Reading is a habit I picked up in the joint,” Jake said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Now what’s this business about Paul?”
“I’ve been trading e-mails with a Polish historian documenting crashes of American bombers on Polish soil,” Joe said, sitting on the recliner. “Mike Mulskawicz confirms the Brooklyn Avenger went down in a field twenty miles from Manowitz. The pastor of the local parish has the dog tags that were removed from the bodies. After the war, the Russians blocked all attempts to forward the tags to American representatives and were placed in a hiding.”
“Americans are buried all over Europe. What’s your point? I’m too old to travel to the only country where the largest of the concentration camps could have been built with nary a word of protest. The Poles didn’t need any incentives to shove their Jews into the ovens.”
“It means that we could bring him back if you want.”
“Of course I would want him home,” Jake said, indignantly. “But how?”
“A colonel at the Pentagon assured me the Air Force will exhume the bodies and bring them back for DNA testing. After positive identification, Paul’s remains will be released.”
Jake powered up. “I’m hungry as a bear. Let’s go to breakfast.”
“I’ll have to take a rain check,” Joe said, “I’ve got a class at noon.”