When Gella saw us she went straight to her husband and put her arms around him. He brought his arms around her, but it was more a hopeless gesture than it was a hug. Fearless and I waited for the pitiful embrace to be over, and then I suggested we make tracks.
But before we could get out of there a ranking officer in uniform came up to us.
“Mrs. Greenspan,” the tallish, portly man said. His smile was an amenity, like a blindfold offered before the firing squad. “Is this your husband?”
“Yes. This is Lieutenant Binder,” she said to our assembly.
Binder shook Morris’s hand and looked into his eyes. “Sorry for your loss.”
Morris mumbled something.
“Which one of you boys is Paris Minton?” the policeman asked.
I hesitated and then lifted a finger to indicate myself.
His eyes were peacock blue, his skin tended toward gray.
I was trying to keep my mind on freedom.
“Would you spare me a few minutes?” Lieutenant Binder asked.
He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead he touched my arm and steered me to a small room behind the admitting sergeant’s desk.
It wasn’t a room really, but just a space behind a frosted glass door. Inside were a wooden table and chair. It was a place where the desk sergeant could eat his meal or take a cigarette break.
“Mrs. Greenspan tells me that you happened on her great-aunt and -uncle after they were attacked two days ago,” the lieutenant said.
“Yeah, yeah. We were lookin’ for a gardenin’ job, and then there the old man was, stabbed.”
“Then the old woman invited you to stay at their home?” He had the satisfied grin of a crocodile.
“We needed a place to stay,” I said.
“Because of a fire, I believe the young lady said.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Sit down, Mr. Minton,” Binder said.
“No, thank you.”
“Sit, please.”
“No,” I replied.
That was the test. If I were close to arrest he would have made me bend. That’s how it worked: a cop pushed you to the limit but never more unless he could turn a key on you.
“Okay,” Binder said. “Have it your way. I just wanted to ask you a few more questions.”
“Shoot.”
He didn’t jump right off. First he gauged me with those shiny blue eyes of his. His orbs were so bright that it was hard for me to imagine that there was intelligence behind them.
“What do you think of these Jews?” he asked. He twisted his lips on the last word as if it was a lemon peel in his mouth.
“Like you say, I’ve only been there two days. That whole time the old man’s been unconscious in the hospital. Fanny’s okay, though.”
“Did she get along with her niece and her nephew-in-law?”
“Yeh. Sure. I mean, she thought Morris was kind of a fool. But I guess he kinda is.”
“Do you think that either one of them might have wanted the old Jews harmed?”
“No,” I said. “No. The girl and Fanny really loved each other. And Morris is more broke up than Gella over Fanny bein’ dead.”
Binder wasn’t really listening. He didn’t really care about the people in this case. But he seemed to want something. He regarded me again with those beautiful but stupid eyes.
