The Day Miriam Hirsch Disappeared Read online

  “How’d he do that?”

  “Kept the guy up until he won. Forty hours with no sleep.” Skull winked at me. “Rothstein had style too. He ran a casino, moved a lot of booze, financed all sorts of capers. But he always wore a tux and he danced with the ladies every night.” Skull’s chin dipped. “He was—whadda’ya call it—a smooth operator.”

  I wanted to ask him more about Miriam, but I didn’t have the guts.

  ***

  Mrs. T never had the chance to evict Miriam. She never came back. Three days later they found her body in an alley off Lincoln Avenue. The German part of town. She’d been raped, beaten, strangled. The cops identified her by her purse.

  A tough-looking Irish detective, Patrick O’Meara, came around to question us. Mrs. T told him everything she knew. About the theater. Skull. The man with the blond whiskers.

  O’Meara hustled over to Davy Miller’s to question Skull. We trailed behind. It was the first time we’d seen him ourselves in a couple of days. He looked bad. His shirt was wrinkled, he hadn’t shaved, and his bloodshot eyes kept darting around the room. His mood seemed to shift from arrogance to desolation, and his answers were clipped and curt.

  I began to think the worst. Miriam and Skull broke up. Miriam started up with other men. Skull must have been crazy with jealousy and he snapped. It looked that way to me. And to O’Meara. He wasn’t nice to Skull. Told him not to go anywhere for a while.

  Of course, the next morning Skull was gone, and no one knew where. Or they weren’t telling. That was the only proof I needed. He killed Miriam. Maybe my parents were right after all. Lawndale people were different.

  Barney and I were puzzling it over at the restaurant when O’Meara showed up. Mrs. T was upstairs getting dressed, so he nabbed Joey, the head waiter.

  “Ever seen this guy?” He showed him a picture.

  Joey shook his head.

  “You sure?” You could tell O’Meara didn’t believe him. “Seen Skulnick recently?”

  Joey kept wiping glasses with his towel. “Nope.”

  O’Meara turned around, saw us sitting at a table. We froze. His eyes narrowed, then he came over. I tried to look nonchalant.

  “Your turn, boys. You ever seen this guy?”

  He threw the picture down on our table.

  I could hear Barney’s sharp intake of breath. It was the man with the blond whiskers. I tried to be blasé.

  But O’Meara was patient. Eventually, my eyes drifted back to the picture. O’Meara was waiting.

  “So what’s it gonna be, boys?”

  “Who is he?” I croaked.

  “You seen him?”

  I met O’Meara’s eyes and nodded.

  “Name’s Peter Schultz. They call him Twitch. Some kind of problem around his eye.” O’Meara stared at me. I looked at the floor. I knew the name. Peter Schultz was the head of the German-American Bund in Chicago. They were Nazis.

  “He was murdered last night,” O’Meara said. “We found him in the same alley they found the girl.”

  Barney made a mewling sound in his throat. I felt old.

  “He was stabbed about fifteen times, then strangled. They got him pretty good.”

  I didn’t move.

  O’Meara kept the pressure on. “You know, it’s interesting. With him gone, their whole organization is up for grabs, you know?”

  I didn’t say anything, but the pieces were finally coming together. I knew who killed Miriam, and I knew who killed Schultz. I wondered if O’Meara knew too.

  O’Meara went on. “Someone—someone close to him—knew the Kraut’s habits so well they even knew what time he took a dump. They got him on his way to a Bund meeting. You have any idea who that might be?”

  I kept my mouth shut.

  He shook his head. “Well, whoever it was, now there’s one less Nazi in the world.” O’Meara stood up, put his hat on, threw us a world-weary glance. “They say all’s fair in love and war. What do you think?”

  What I thought was that I may have been wrong about Skull all along; that this was more about war than love. There may have been a reason why Miriam was dating Schultz; why Skull was pressuring Miriam to get information she didn’t want to do. While Skull used Miriam, he was also her avenger.

  “I’ll be seeing you boys around,” O’Meara said, then stepped through the door and left.

  ***

  Skull never came back to Lawndale. At least we never heard from him again. I didn’t hang around much either. School started, and I got busy with homework and sports. I met a girl at Hyde Park High, Barbara Steinberg. She was pretty nice. Barney called a couple of times, but neither of us pushed it. Other things were fast taking precedence. Hitler annexed Austria, and the news coming out of Europe was grim. No one seemed to remember the day Miriam Hirsch disappeared.

  THE END

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