Chasm Read online

  His sons marched carefully out the door and returned to their rooms.

  Lynette got up and placed her arms around her husband. “Win. Did you take the Serax?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you feeling all right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can we talk about it later?”

  “Yes.”

  She kissed him on the cheek.

  “You mix the browns and blacks,” he said.

  “What, honey?”

  “I said, you mix the browns and blacks. And what’s more, the argyles are scattered just everywhere.” There was an edge to his voice.

  She took his left hand and pulled him back to the bed. “Come, husband dear. Come to bed. I’ll pack your bags a little later. Come into my arms and sleep. Sleep.”

  Ferret rested his head on his wife’s breast and sobbed. “The evil. The evil,” he whispered.

  From Hopkins Airport, Ferret took a cab to the Flats, whose old bridges, warehouses and slag heaps were fast being offset by yuppie bars and upscale restaurants and shops. “Glassman Printing and Engraving”, flanked by a Navajo jewelry store on one side and an latte bar on the other, was one of the few old establishments that had survived the yuppification.

  The elderly proprietor was hunched behind the counter when Ferret entered. He was scrutinizing a stamp with a large magnifying glass under a halogen lamp. The light glinted off a gold Star of David on a thin chain around his neck. The old man barely flinched as Ferret approached.

  “Do you collect stamps?” he asked, dispensing with greetings.

  “Er, no. But I used to collect coins,” Ferret replied.

  “Not the same,” Glassman said in his pronounced German accent. “Here, take a look at this.” He handed Ferret a sheet of paper which held the stamp. “It is the Black Honduras. See how exquisite it is. Remarkable. So much art in so little space.”

  To Ferret, one old stamp looked like any other. “It must be valuable.”

  “This little slip of paper, Mr. Ferret, would buy several BMWs. But a BMW’s value declines by a quarter once you drive it off the lot, and even more thereafter. The Black Honduras only increases in value. But its beauty is immeasurable, priceless.”

  “Chaim, you retain a lively and interested mind when your contemporaries are off retired in Florida.” It occurred to Ferret that this old German had acquired a considerable fortune during the sixty years he had resided in the United States.

  “Florida. Bah! I’d sooner be sent back to the Russian front. Florida is a vast boneyard for those waiting to die. I’ll work here until I fall dead, I’m afraid.”

  The secret irony of “Chaim Glassman” never failed to make Ferret shudder. A protege of Operation PAPERCLIP , Chaim was known until 1945 as Gruppenfuehrer Rolf Schleicker, a rising young star in the SS. An Austrian by birth, Schleicker had lived and traveled extensively in Yugoslavia with his businessman father as a youth. He spoke native Serbo-Croatian. Later, the SS assigned him to Yugoslavia to take part in the Reich’s efforts to subdue the Yugoslav partisans. With the war’s end, Paperclip valued his expertise on the Yugoslav communists, particularly his intimate knowledge of Tito the man and his leadership structure. Hence, he was recruited by the OSS, the CIA’s precursor, and, through Paperclip, resettled in the U.S., initially bypassing all immigration formalities. Fearful that he would one day be found out, he changed his identity to that of Chaim Glassman, a “non-practicing Jew,” in his own words. What better cover for an ex-SS man than being a Jew? Who would ever suspect? And it worked, lo these past six decades.

  Glassman left the store in the charge of a clerk and bade Ferret to join him in his private office in the back of the shop. He pulled a bottle from behind a row of accounting notebooks. He took two small glasses from his top desk drawer and placed one in front of Ferret.

  “A little slivovitz before business makes it all go a bit easier.” He filled both glasses. He then raised his glass.

  “Prost! — or I should say, Lachayem!” Glassman gulped the contents. Ferret did the same. He hated the potent plum brandy. It smelled to him like burning tires and tasted worse.

  Glassman offered a second shot. Ferret declined.

  “So, this business of last evening. Nasty.” He shook his head.

  “I’ve traveled all the way from D.C. So, what happened?”

  “The Branko boys. They are the worst. I couldn’t control them. So filled with hate. So …so beyond the pale. You should not have brought them. Let them stay in Bosnia. Somebody would have killed them. I am sure of it.” Glassman poured himself a third slivovitz.

  “Branko boys. You mean the two militia guys.”

  “Hah! They are Ustashi. Croatian thugs. Nothing more. I know. We fought with the Ustashi. Only interested in murdering people. Not winning the war. Skorzeny and I almost nabbed Tito, but the Ustashi blew it. You know, if we had had three more divisions in Yugoslavia—”

  “I don’t have time to talk about old times, Chaim.”

  “Ah, yes. But you know that I knew Waldheim.”

  “Yes. I’m aware.”

  “I knew that man would go places one day,” Glassman said, referring to the former United Nations Secretary General who for decades had hidden his Nazi past. The old man broke into a hoarse laughter. “Well, yes, ah, the Branko boys. Cousins from Banja Luka. They were democratic killers.”

  “Huh?”

  “They murdered Muslims, Serbs, Albanians — when they could find some — even fellow Croats who crossed them. They killed everybody equally — democratically, you see. They would be killing NATO soldiers today if they were still back there. Anyway, last night, they planted an incendiary bomb at the home of a Bosnian family. Killed the man and his wife instantly. Their little girl is in critical condition. Over half her body is burned. Terrible tragedy. Terrible.” He shook his head again and stared into his empty glass.

  “How do you know they did it?”

  “They told me! The older one, Milan, phoned me at midnight. He told me to listen to the local news in the morning. I asked him what he was talking about and he laughed. ‘Ten little Muslims. Two down, how many more to go?’ he told me in a kind of sing-song. Then he hung up. Of course, in the morning, I turned on the TV and there it was. Top story. Bosnian family attacked. Naturally, I was shocked. Shocked.” The last sentence he stated flatly, as if feigning deep emotion, but without success.

  “But, why? Why them?”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Suleijmanovic were leaders. They built a mosque, encouraged more Bosnian Muslims to move here, set up a foundation to help Bosnian refugees. They were sought out by the news media for interviews. Very sympathetic people. The Serbian community here felt slighted and slandered.”

  “Chaim, but you were responsible for those two Croats. Where are they?”

  Glassman looked down and shook his head. “I don’t know. They have disappeared. Did not show up at their jobs at the brewery. They are now probably off in a stolen car to create mayhem elsewhere. Two more American road warriors. I’m too old for this. But these people you are bringing in now. They are…barbarians.” The last word, he enunciated in a hushed voice.

  Ferret could feel his heartbeat accelerate, each quickening palpitation marking the expiration of time like a countdown to mortality. He bolted up from his chair and confronted Glassman. “You’ve got to find them, Chaim. They must be brought back. Do you hear me?!”

  Ferret’s cracking voice and throbbing temples reflected his teetering on the edge of a steep emotional precipice. Glassman had seen a lot in his lifetime. Nonetheless it unsettled the old man.

  “Sit down, Mr. Ferret. Be calm. Now tell me, what do I do with them when I find them? This is unprecedented.”

  “You have friends…friends with special abilities.”

  Glassman studied Ferret’s face gravely. “What would you have me do then?” he said in a low voice.

  “They are evil. Evil. And evil must be stamped out. By…by whatever means.”

&
nbsp; “Let me tell you about ‘evil,’ Mr. Ferret. When you are in the grip of others, men who, in troubled times, can manipulate you, make you believe anything, you are capable of anything.”

  Ferret re-took his seat. “What do you mean?”

  “In Germany, we were desperate, prostrate. We yearned for a knight on a white steed to rescue us. And Hitler knew this. He was a master of manipulation. I was a young man. He captured my brain and my soul, along with those of millions of other Germans. We would do his bidding to save ourselves as a nation, yes, even as a race. These Yugoslavs are no different. Each people sees its struggle as one for survival.”

  “You became the evil that Hitler conjured.”

  “Yes, we became the evil. Good buergerlich people. Not guttersnipes. It can happen, in the right circumstances, to anyone. Even in America.”

  “And yourself?”

  “I…I was…misguided.”

  Ferret looked quizzical. “Misguided?! But you were in the Deathshead Division of the SS. They did horrible things. Slaughtered whole populations. How can you say—?”

  “Mr. Ferret. When it happens in America, then you will understand.”

  Ferret’s eyes were locked onto Glassman’s face.

  A torrent of emotions was raging inside the younger man. Glassman looked worried. “Mr. Ferret, you need to move on. To something else. Otherwise, this program will consume you. Believe me. I know.”

  But Ferret wasn’t listening. His eyes were distant. “We became the evil…Survival,” Ferret, lost in thought, muttered in a barely audible voice.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Gallatin wanted answers. That which he cherished more than anything else, his daughter, barely escaped violent death at the hands of unknown persons for unknown reasons. He struggled for answers.

  As an investigator, Gallatin had come to know the Cleveland police force extremely well. Fires, theft cases, criminal vandalism, fraud. They cooperated closely and helped each other out in resolving cases. Senior Detective Ray D’Angelo was more than a colleague. He was a best friend. The two men stood up for each other’s wedding, became godfathers to their respective children. Ray was good. Very good. He’d been offered supervisory detective jobs in Chicago and Seattle, but he’d turned the offers down. Cleveland was his home town. He took care of his aging mother and his wife and kids liked their suburban life there just fine. The veteran police detective was as shocked as everyone else over the Suleijmanovic’s‘ murders. Firebombing was just not the kind of crime that afflicted Cleveland.

  The two men met at their favorite pub, Shaughnigan’s, on the edge of Murray Hill, Cleveland’s Little Italy. They had struck a compromise early in their friendship. Since the Irish had the best bars and the Italians the best restaurants, they would conduct their off-duty carousing anywhere where an Irish pub and an Italian eatery were within five blocks of one another. A beer at Shaughnigan’s, therefore, was often followed by linguine at Nostri Amici, two blocks down on Mayfield Street.

  What distinguished Shaughnigan’s from its counterparts was not the old, long, curving oak bar with brass rails, nor its ecumenical clientele, nor its tolerance of a small, unassuming clique of gay dart throwers. It was its restrooms. A clever artist had fashioned around the ladies’ room toilet a distinct likeness of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, and around the men’s room john, that of Prince Phillip. The toilet seat formed a gaping mouth and lips, so that the effect was of the monarchs’ swallowing a patron’s feces. It was one of the many little touches that gave the establishment a cast of jolly bawdiness. Otherwise, musty, dark, reeking of stale cigarette smoke and decorated with the usual Irish kitsch — the de rigeur “Erin Go Bragh!” sign, green leprechauns and shamrocks — it was just another neighborhood bar.

  “How can you drink that shit?” D’Angelo inquired of his pal.

  “It’s called a Black ‘n’ Tan by the Queen’s Ass, or Her Majesty’s Royal Butt, for short,” Gallatin responded. He diluted soupy, black Guinness with Michelob draft, using the mixture to wash down a shot of molasses-dark Irish whisky.

  “I won’t ask why. I’m sure there’s a lot of history behind it.”

  “You got it.”

  D’Angelo tried his best to lift his pal out of the doldrums in the two years since Celeste’s death, but to little avail. Gallatin still had a boyish face which, when he smiled, gave him a dimpled, little-boy mischievousness that made him irresistible to women. D’Angelo’s own black hair sprouted twice as many grays as Gallatin’s sandy strands, and the latter, at 6‘2”, retained a muscled physique. But Gallatin was self-destructing inside. And a potent antidote to such a process, female companionship, remained absent from his life.

  “You’re hittin’ the sauce pretty serious these days.”

  “I’ll let you criticize my drinking when I start calling into question your eating habits, Mr. Salami and Provolone.”

  “Hey. Sorry! Excuse me all to hell and back!” D’Angelo caught himself. “Mike. I didn’t mean anything—”

  Gallatin waved him away. “No sweat. Forget it.” He took a long gulp of the beer.

  They sat silently, though the communication hardly stopped. One of the vestigial traits that humans possess, and share with animals, is being in mental synch with one’s mate, one’s best friend, one’s children. Nothing is spoken, but much is understood.

  “How’s Lauren?” D’Angelo asked.

  Gallatin grunted and took another swallow of his concoction. “You know, every time I look into her baby blues, I see Celeste. But she has this…this granite mask. No sign of life. Just an empty shell. Funny. She pulled Nura out of a snowdrift, verified that her pal was alive, then went into shock. Could’ve been from seeing Nura’s disfigured face. The doctors don’t know for sure. And I…I—” He choked up and looked away.

  “Mike,” D’Angelo said softly. “I hate to see you like this. Anything I can do, I will. You know that. But you’ve got to pick yourself up. Move on. If you don’t, you’ll just destroy yourself. And the way you’re drinking, you’re well on the way.”

  “Yeah, well. Remember how when we played football, they used to call me ‘Let ‘em Go Gallatin’? Again, I was too late to save Celeste. Now Lauren.” He hit the table with his clenched fist. He fought back tears. “So, what about it then, Ray? You guys got any leads?” he demanded.

  D’Angelo studied his friend’s face, then said, “You know how it is. We poke around. Talk to people—”

  “Cut the bullshit, Ray.”

  Ray looked at his friend and thought for a moment. “I don’t know if we got any leads.”

  “But you do have some information.”

  “Some. But it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. We need to develop it further.”

  “Time, Ray! Time!” Gallatin exclaimed. “It’s running out. And every day that the perpetrators are on the loose, my daughter drifts further away. I could’ve saved my wife. I didn’t act in time. I’m not going to lose my daughter. Not!” He banged his fist on the table.

  D’Angelo nodded sympathetically. “This is what we’ve got. First, it wasn’t an accident. Six gasoline-filled pipe bombs detonated electronically blew away the bedroom and quickly ignited the rest of the house. Low-tech stuff, but very effective. It’s a miracle that the girls weren’t killed instantly like Mr. and Mrs. Suleijmanovic. ATF told us that it was definitely a professional job. Most likely by someone with military training.”

  “Like anti-immigrant militia crazies?”

  “Don’t know. But we’ve asked the FBI and state police to look into it. Meantime, we’ve been checking out the ethnic angle. There it gets interesting. Seems there’s been some tension among some of the newcomers.”

  “That’s nothing new. Remember when the Irish and Italian boys used to go at it with their fists on the ballfield? Then, when there was a standoff, they’d go after a Bohunk.” Gallatin chuckled.

  A buxom, forty-something waitress replenished their glasses. “Noraid’ll be collectin’ tonight, boys. Ju
st thought you’d wanna know,” she said in a brambly brogue.

  “Shit.” Gallatin surveyed the blue-collar types bellowing jokes and singing drinking ditties at the bar, the old men huddled in a corner recollecting old times, the klatsch of smart, young yuppies debating politics and business cycles at another table. “Look at ‘em. Searching for their roots in the wrong places. In bars that could’ve come straight out of some Hollywood studio’s prop department. These dumb fucks give to Noraid so they can blow up school kids and Christmas shoppers if the peace there ever falls apart again. So, are the Serbs, et al. taking lessons from the crazy Micks?”

  “Maybe something like that. We looked into all the hate incidents within the Bosnian-Serb-Croat community over the past couple of years. Oh, there’s been a couple of scuffles, one barroom fistfight, a lot of complaining to the cops that Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so-ohvic called somebody names. Crap like that. We narrowed down to six individuals, though, who’ve made repeated threats. Three Serbs and three Croats. Not all the threats have been directed against Muslims, mind you. They go after each other and folks within their own group. Everybody seems to be after everybody else. They’re pazzo, if you ask me.” D’Angelo tapped his temple.

  Gallatin leaned forward on his elbows. “So?”

  “One Croat dude’s clearly a nut case. Sixty-eight years old. He marches up and down Ontario Street with a placard scribbled with all kinds of crazy shit about saving the world from the Muslim hordes. Two of the Serbs were definitely out of town the day of the bombing. They were in Chicago visiting their girlfriends. The alibis stick. Mean SOBs, though. One took his kids out of school because it had Bosnian, Arab and Somalian kids. The other wrote a couple of hate letters to the Dealer praising the guys responsible for genocide over there. So, that leaves one Serb and two Croats.”