Ed McBain - Ten Plus One

“How you met, what sort of business arrangement you had, what Mr. Forrest’s function was.”

“He was a salesman when we met. I already had the business. He sold cartons for a company that was downtown at the time—it has since gone out of business. We import from India, you know, and we ship goods all over the United States, so naturally we need cartons in which to ship them. At that time, I bought most of my cartons from Tony’s company. I saw him, oh, perhaps twice a month.”

“This was shortly after the war, is that right, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Would you know if Mr. Forrest had been in the service?”

“Yes, he was,” Etterman said. “He was with the artillery. He was wounded in Italy, in a battle with the Germans.” Etterman paused. He turned to Meyer and said, “I am an American citizen, you know. I was here from 1912, my parents came here when I was still a boy. Most of the family left Germany. Some of them went to India, which is how the business started.”

“Do you know what rank Mr. Forrest held in the Army, sir?” Carella asked.

“He was a captain, I believe.”

“All right, go ahead, please.”

“Well, I liked him from the beginning. There was a nice manner about him. Cartons, after all, are the same no matter where you buy them. I bought from Tony because I liked him personally.” Etterman offered the detectives a cigar, and then lit one himself. “My one vice,” he said. “My doctor says they will kill me. I told my doctor, I would like to die in bed with a young blonde, or else smoking a cigar.” Etterman chuckled. “At my age, I will have to be content to die smoking a cigar.”

“How did Mr. Forrest come to the firm?” Carella said, smiling.

“I asked him one day if he was satisfied with his position, because if he wasn’t, I was ready to make him an offer. We discussed it further, and he came to work for the company. As a salesman. That was fifteen years ago. Today, or rather when he died, he was a vice president.”

“What prompted your offer, Mr. Etterman?”

“As I told you, I liked him from the beginning. Then, too…” Etterman shook his head. “Well, it does not matter.”

“What, sir?”

“You see…” Etterman shook his head again. “You see, gentlemen, I lost my son. He was killed in the war.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Carella said.

“Yes, well, it was a long time ago, we must go on living, isn’t that so?” He smiled a brief, sad smile. “He was with a bomber squadron, my son. His plane was shot down in the raid on Schweinfurt on April thirteenth, 1944. It was a ball-bearings factory there.”

The room went silent.

“Our family came originally from a town close to Schweinfurt. It is sometimes odd, don’t you think, the way life works out? I was born as a German in a town near Schweinfurt, and my son is killed as an American flying over Schweinfurt.” He shook his head. “It sometimes makes me wonder.”

Again there was silence.

Carella cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Etterman, what sort of a person was Anthony Forrest? Did he get along well with your staff, did he…?”

“He was the finest human being I have ever known,” Etterman said. “I do not know of anyone who disliked him.” He shook his head. “I can only believe that some maniac killed him.”

“Mr. Etterman, did he usually leave the office at the same time each day?”

“We close at five,” Etterman said. “Tony and I would usually talk for, oh, perhaps another fifteen minutes. Yes, I would say he usually left the building between five-fifteen and five-thirty.”

“Did he get along with his wife?”

“He and Clara were very happily married.”

“How about the children? His daughter is nineteen, is that right, and the two boys are about fifteen?”

“That is correct.”

“Any trouble with them?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, have they ever been in any kind of trouble?”

“I do not know what you mean.”

“With the law, with other kids, bad company, anything like that.”

“They are fine children,” Etterman said. “Cynthia was graduated highest in her class from high school, and won a scholarship to Ramsey University. The two boys do very well scholastically. One of them is on his school baseball team, and the other belongs to the debating club. No, there was never any trouble with Tony’s children.”

“Do you know anything about his Army background, Mr. Etterman? Whoever shot him is an expert with a rifle, so the possibility that he’s an ex-Army man exists. Since Mr. Forrest was in the Army…”

“I don’t know much about it. I’m sure he was a fine officer.”

“He never mentioned having any trouble with his men, anything that might have carried over into…?”

“Gentlemen, he was in the Army during the war. The war has been over for a long time. Surely, no one would carry a grudge for so many years.”

“Anything’s possible,” Carella said. “We’re looking for a place to hang our hats, sir.”

“It must be a maniac,” Etterman said. “It can only be a maniac.”

“I hope not, sir,” Carella said, and then they rose and thanked him for his time.

On the street outside, Meyer said, “I always feel funny when I’m around Germans.”

“I noticed that,” Carella said.

“Yeah? Was it really noticeable? Was I too quiet?”

“You didn’t say a word all the while we were up there.”

Meyer nodded. “I kept thinking, ‘All right, maybe your son was killed flying an American bomber over Schweinfurt, but maybe, on the other hand, one of your nephews was stuffing my relatives into ovens at Dachau.’ “ Meyer shook his head. “You know, Sarah and I were at a party a couple of weeks ago, and somebody there was arguing with somebody else because he was selling German cars in this country. What it got down to, the guy said that he would like to see all the German people exterminated. So the other guy said, ‘There was a German once who wanted to see all the Jewish people exterminated.’ And I could see his point. What the hell makes it more right for Jews to exterminate Germans than vice versa? I could understand the point completely. But at the same time, Steve, something inside me agreed with the first guy. Because, I guess maybe deep down inside, every Jew in the world would like to see the Germans exterminated for what they did to us.”

“You can’t hate a people here and now for what another people in another time did, Meyer,” Carella said.

“You’re not a Jew,” Meyer said.

“No, I’m not. But I look at a guy like Etterman, and I see only a sad old man who lost his son in the war, and who two days ago lost the equivalent of a second son.”

“I look at him, and I see the film clips of those bulldozers pushing thousands of dead Jews, that’s what I see.”

“Do you see the son who died over Schweinfurt?”

“No. I think I honestly hate the Germans, and I think I’ll hate them till the day I die.”

“Maybe you’re entitled to,” Carella said.

“You know, there are times when I think you’re Jewish,” Meyer answered.

“When I think of what happened in Germany, I am Jewish,” Carella said. “How can I be anything else and still call myself a human being? What the hell were they throwing in those ovens? Garbage? Animals? Don’t you think I feel what you feel?”

“I’m not sure you do,” Meyer said.

“No? Then go to hell.”

“You getting sore or something?”

“A little.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you why. I don’t think I even knew a Jew until I was twelve years old. That’s the God’s honest truth. Oh, yeah, there was a guy who used to come around to the door selling stuff, and my mother called him ‘The Jew.’ She used to say, ‘The Jew is coming today.’ I don’t think she meant anything derogatory, or maybe she did, who the hell knows? She was raised in Italy, and she didn’t know Jews from a hole in the wall. Maybe, for her, ‘Jew’ was synonymous with peddler. To me, a Jew was an old man with a beard and a bundle on his back. Until I got to high school. That was where I met Jews for the first time. You have to remember that Hitler was already in power by then. Well, I heard a joke one day, and I repeated it to a Jewish kid in the cafeteria. The joke was built on a riddle, and the riddle was: ‘What’s the fastest thing in the world?’ The answer was: ‘A Jew riding through Germany on a bicycle.’ The kid I told the joke to didn’t think it was very funny. I couldn’t understand what I’d said to offend him. So I went home and asked my father, who was also born in Italy, who was running a bakery, well, you know, he still does. I told him the joke, and he didn’t laugh either, and then he took me inside, we had a dining room at the time, with one of those big old mahogany tables. We sat at the table, and he said to me in Italian, ‘Son, there is nothing good about hatred, and nothing funny about it, either.’ I went back to school the next day, and I looked for that kid, I can still remember his name, Reuben Zimmerman, and I told him I was sorry for what I’d said the day before, and he told me to forget it. But he never spoke to me again all the while we were in that high school. Four years, Meyer, and he never spoke to me.”