Jonathan Kellerman - Time Bomb

Milo’s face got hard. “Gonna nail him?”

“Gonna try. Actually, this particular case looks good. Of course there’ll be the usual outcry from his family and friends: We’ve got the wrong guy; this one’s a saint, wouldn’t hurt a fly; we’re only persecuting him because of his noble anticommunist background- Moscow’s behind all of it, you see. As if the Russians would give us the time of day. Not to mention a whole bunch of mewling from the nonconfrontational wimps who think human nature’s basically pure and bygones should be bygones. And, of course, straight-out anti-Semitic garbage from the revisionist morons- the it-never-happened-in-the-first-place-but-if-it-did-they-deserved-it crowd. Your basic neo-Bundists.”

“Neo-who?”

“Bundists.” She smiled. “Sorry for being esoteric, I was referring to the German-American Bund. It was a big movement in this country, before World War II. Passed itself off as a German-American pride society, but that was just a cover for American Nazism. Bundists were big in the isolationist movement, agitated against U.S. involvement in the war, used the America First cover to press for mandatory sterilization of all refugees- that kind of thing. But they weren’t just a tiny fringe group. They held rallies at Madison Square Garden for thousands of people, complete with swastika banners, Brown Shirt marches, ‘The Horst Wessel Song.’ Ran paramilitary training camps- two dozen of them, with bunkhouses for ‘storm troopers.’ Their goal was to set up a German-speaking colony- a Sudetenland- in New York State. First step toward an Aryan America. Their leaders were paid agents of the Third Reich. They published newspapers, had a press service, a book publishing company called Flanders Hall. Got support from Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford- the Bundesführer, a man called Fritz Kuhn, was a Ford Motors chemist- and plenty of politicians too. They interfaced with Father Coughlin, Gerald L.K. Smith, lots of other loonies. But after Pearl Harbor, their leaders were rounded up for espionage and sedition and sent to prison. It put a damper on the movement but didn’t kill it. Extremism’s like that. A recurrent cancer- you need to be always looking out for it, cutting it away. Nowadays it’s skinheads, revisionists… the Holocaust never happened. They thrive on economic hardship- tried to exploit the farmers problems a few years back. The latest thing is Odinism. Some sort of ancient Norse religion. They reject Christianity because it evolved out of Judaism. Then there’s this other group that claims to be the real Hebrews. We Jews are subhuman, the spawn of Eve and the snake. Farrakhan says the same kind of thing- white separatists showed up at one of his rallies and donated money.”

“Nutso,” said Milo.

“But dangerous. We’re working overtime keeping an eye on them all.”

“Was Novato involved in investigating any of them?”

“No. We keep the volunteers away from that kind of thing- too dangerous. I’m up to two death threats a week. He did library work: reshelving, working on the index catalogue. I’d call down with a list of references and ask him to get them for me. Sometimes I’d send him to outside libraries- UCLA or Hebrew Union College. Or over to the Federal Building to pick up some documents. He had a motorcycle, which made him perfect for that. Mostly what he did was read- on his own time. Sat in the library until closing time, then took stuff home with him.”

She looked down at the box. “I glanced through it. Seems to be mostly Holocaust history. The origins and structure of the Nazi party and neo-Nazi groups. At least that’s what he checked out. We’ve got a very comprehensive civil rights collection, and we put together an entire section on black slavery. But he didn’t check out any of that. I was surprised. Which just reminds me how easy it is to stereotype- you’ve got to fight it constantly. Still, it’s the first time I can remember a black kid focusing exclusively on the Holocaust. There was something about him, Milo. A naïveté- an optimistic sincerity- that was really touching. You just knew that in a couple of years he was going to get disillusioned and lose some of that. Maybe even all of it. But in the meantime it was nice to see. Why would anyone want to kill him?” She stopped. “Pretty dumb question coming from me.”

“It’s always a good question,” Milo said. “It’s the answers that stink. Did he ever mention any family or friends?”

“No. The only time he got even remotely personal was toward the end of his… Must have been early September. He came into my office to deliver some books, and after he put them down he kept hanging around. I didn’t even notice at first- I was up to my elbows in something. Finally I realized he was still there and glanced up. He looked nervous. Upset about something. I asked him what was on his mind. He started talking about some pictures he’d come across while cataloguing- dead babies out of the crematoria, Mengele’s experiments. He was really affected. Sometimes it just hits you, out of the clear blue- even after you’ve seen thousands of other pictures, one will set you off. I encouraged him to talk, get it all out. Let him go on about why, if there was a God, He could let those things happen. Why did terrible things happen to good people? Why couldn’t people be kind to one another? Why were people always betraying one another- brutalizing one another?

“When he was through I told him those were questions humanity had been asking itself since the beginning of time. That I had no answers, but the fact that he was asking them showed he was one cut above the crowd- had some depth to him. The wisdom to question. That the key to making the world a better place was to constantly question, never accept the brutality. Then he said something strange. He said Jewish people question all the time. Jewish people are deep. He said it almost with a longing in his voice- a reverence. I said thanks for the compliment, but we Jews don’t have a monopoly on either suffering or insight. That we’d swallowed more than our share of persecution, and that kind of thing did tend to lead to introspection, but that when you got down to it, Jews were like everyone else- good and bad, some deep, some shallow. He listened and got this strange smile on his face, kind of sad, kind of dreamy. As if he were thinking about something else. Then he turned to me and asked me if I’d like him better if he were Jewish.

“That really threw me. I said I liked him just fine the way he was. But he wouldn’t let go of it, wanted to know how I’d feel if he were Jewish. I told him we could always use another bright penny in the tribe- was he thinking of converting? And he just gave me another strange smile and said I should be flexible in my criteria. Then he left. We never talked about it again.”

“What did he mean, ‘criteria’?”

“The only thing I can think of was that he was considering a Reform or Conservative conversion. I’m Orthodox- he knew that- and the Orthodox have more stringent criteria, so maybe he was asking for my approval, asking me to be flexible in my criteria for conversion. It was a strange conversation, Milo. I made a mental note to follow up on it, try to get to know him better. But with the workload it just never happened. Right after that, he stopped showing up. For a while I wondered if I’d said the wrong thing, failed him in some way.”

She stopped, laced her hands. Opened a desk drawer, pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and blew out smoke.

“So much for quitting. My first all week. Talking about this isn’t good for my willpower. Since I got your message I’ve been wondering if there was something he was asking from me that I didn’t give. Some way I could have-”

“Come on, Judy,” said Milo. “Dead-end thinking.”