“Is that the cornerstone of your faith?” I asked. “You made a bedrock decision fifty years ago to eschew all detectives and nothing has ever happened to make you change your mind?”
The door reopened so quickly that I lost my balance and fell into him. For a moment we did a tangled tango of arms, legs, briefcase and flashlight, until he backed up and I fell onto my right side. As I got back to my feet, I saw his face looked white and gluey, as if he had suddenly smeared himself with Crisco.
A worn tan jacket was hanging on a hook behind me. I draped it over his shoulders and led him into his sitting room, where I pushed him down into a frayed armchair. The room was heavy with stale cigarette smoke; an ashtray on the coffee table was overflowing with butts. Other than that, the room wasn’t really untidy, just in need of a good vacuuming. Not that I should judge.
What was surprising was that the walls were covered with photographs and maps of migratory birds. His own observations were written in a finicky script on strips laid across tracking maps. Several binocular cases stood on a ledge next to one of the tiny windows, a worn leather case with “Carl Zeiss” stamped on it and a bigger, more modern case from Nikon.
When Dzornen’s color started to return to normal, I asked, “What happened fifty years ago, Mr. Dzornen?”
“I dropped out of school.”
“Was that because of something a detective did?”
His mouth twisted in a sneer. “Because of something a detective didn’t do.”
I thought this over. “A crime was committed but a detective never solved it and you were framed so you had to quit school?”
“Interesting guess, Detective. Where were you fifty years ago?”
“Lying in my crib, probably. You want to tell me what the detective didn’t do fifty years ago?”
He gave a ferocious grin. “The detective never showed up. Unlike you. You’re incredibly late. What do you want?”
“Did this non-arriving detective have something to do with Kitty Binder?”
“Oh, Kitty.” He made a dismissive gesture. “You been talking to Herta?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Should I?”
“My sister’s always had her undies in a bundle over Kitty. Herta considers herself the guardian of Benjamin Dzornen’s memory. She has a shrine to him in that mausoleum she lives in. She’s always imagined Kitty wants to desecrate the shrine—Herta doesn’t understand Kitty is like her and Ilse, just one more fucked-up refugee from Hitler’s Europe.”
I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. “Does Herta think Kitty Binder wants to attack her?”
“She may worry that Kitty will attack her bank accounts. Did Kitty hire you to pry money out of Herta? Tell her from me that Herta clings tightly to her hoard, only opening her wallet on rare and special occasions.”
“Like when she bought you those?” I gestured toward the binoculars.
He spread his lips in a parody of a smile, showing teeth stained gray by cigarettes. “Not even then. The Zeiss was something my father left me. Social Security paid for the Nikon.”
“Kitty hired me to find Martin, her grandson,” I said. “I thought he might have called on you or your sister before he disappeared.”
“You keep thinking, Detective. It may win you the Nobel Prize, like it did for my old man. But believe me, all those thoughts, and all those prizes, they don’t save you from being really stupid in the end. I try not to think, just watch the birds. They keep you far away from human muck.”
“Very likely.” He was watching me warily behind the patina of world-weary chatter, thinking like mad, but about what? “Did Martin come to see you this summer?”
“Why would he do that?” Julius said.
“Because he saw something that didn’t make sense to him, and I wondered if it was connected to his family’s history, which is possibly also your history.”
“You wonder away, Detective, because, like they say on the TV cop shows, this conversation is over.” He leaned back in the armchair and put on an ostentatious pantomime of a man asleep.
I watched him for a bit, but he didn’t budge: eyes drooped shut, jaw slack, short loud snorts coming from his nose. When I got to my feet and started poking about among the drawers on an old desk, he was up in a flash. He was seventy-something, but he was strong, and he grabbed me hard enough to make me wince. I broke away from him, but didn’t retaliate: he was in the right—I didn’t have any business looking at his papers. And, as he’d said at the outset, I couldn’t produce a warrant.
13
THE DZORNEN EFFECT
THIS IS MY SIXTEENTH YEAR of teaching. I’ve had a number of bright students, but Martin Binder is one who stays with me. Such a combination of native talent and poor direction.”