“That’s probably right,” I said. “Well, thank you.”
“Any time, Officer. You didn’t want to go over how I come to notice the gold certificate? We’d been told to be careful of counterfeits, so…”
“No, that’s okay, Mr. Lyle.”
“Oh. Well, fine.” He couldn’t hide his disappointment. “Good afternoon to you, Officer.”
The brownstone down the block was a five-story walk-up; this was a fairly busy thoroughfare, and many of the buildings had a bottom-floor storefront, but not this one. It had obviously been an apartment house at one time, but as the neighborhood had begun to slide got converted to a rooming house, large apartments turned into modest one-and two-room suites.
Gerta Henkel was an apple-cheeked strudel in a cream-colored sweater that showed off her finer points. Around her pale neck she wore some cheap pearls, which she toyed with as she met us at the door. Her eyes were small and dark and wide-set, and her mouth was generous if rather thin-lipped. She smiled frequently. She offered me her hand, at the door of the little flat, and her grasp was warm and soft.
“Thank you for seeing us, Mrs. Henkel.”
We stepped inside and she closed the door.
“Mr. Heller,” she said, “anything I can do to help Richard, I will.”
Her accent touched certain words—“anyt’ing”—in an appealing way.
“This is Evalyn McLean,” I said, introducing the two women, who gave each other cold appraisals. They instinctively did not like each other, not uncommon between two women who are attractive in differing ways, but shook hands and smiled in a bad approximation of cordiality.
She led us to a little table near a gauzily curtained window overlooking the street. Her hips were sheathed in a black skirt and she walked with a sway as compelling as the swing of a hypnotist’s watch.
“I’ll get coffee,” she said. “Cream or sugar, anyone?”
“Black is fine,” I said, and Evalyn asked for cream.
Evalyn whispered to me, “Do you think Hauptmann…you know?”
What she meant was, did Hauptmann have an affair with Gerta, as Prosecutor Wilentz had done his best to imply at the trial.
“If he didn’t,” I said, “he’s nuts.”
She made a face and boxed my arm.
Gerta returned with a tray of small brimming coffee cups and some tiny, crunchy sugar cookies.
“I’d like to speak to your husband, too, Mrs. Henke.”
“He be gone till six, at least,” she said. “Working a job in the Bronx.”
Henkel was a house painter. Seemed like many of Hauptmann’s friends were in the construction trades.
“That man Wilentz,” Gerta said, nibbling a cookie with tiny white teeth, “tried to make Richard and me look bad. There was nothing bad between us, Mr. Heller. Richard was always a gentleman.”
“You met at Hunter’s Island?”
“Yes. We all go there for good time.”
“But wasn’t Mrs. Hauptmann away, when you met Dick?”
“I guess. But Anna and me become good friends. We are real good friends. I spend much time with her. I have spend time with her in Trenton; we stay at a hotel, so she can be near Richard, sometimes.”
“Gerta…may I call you Gerta?”
“Sure. Can I call you by your first name?”
Evalyn drank her coffee; it had cream in it, but her expression was black.
“Yes, please—call me Nate.”
“You look Irish, Nate—but your name is German, isn’t it?”
“My people came from Halle.”
“I grew up in Leipzig. Went to school there with Fisch. That’s who you want to know about, right?”
“Yes. He lived in this building?”
“He had one furnished room—thirteen dollars a week; on this same floor. He moved from here, though, in the spring of ’33, to a bigger place, in Yorkville, near the brokerage office where he and Richard would go.”
When she said “though,” it sounded like “dough.”
“Before Fisch moved, Richard would meet him, here, at your place?”
“Yes. This is what give Wilentz ideas about Richard and me.” She made a face; what a cutie—I couldn’t blame Wilentz for any ideas he might have about her. “Richard would stop and have coffee with me, when he come to pick up Fisch. But we were not alone together. Fisch was here, or Carl, or sometimes my sister.”
“Gerta, frankly, it doesn’t matter to me either way, about you and Dick.”
That made her eyes spark. She smiled. “Really?” she asked, and she nibbled a cookie.
“What kind of fellow,” Evalyn said tightly, getting us back on track, “was this Isidor Fisch?”
