“I don’t know what you’re implying, perhaps that my father let K?the into our family, but I assure you, we never took her on any private outings. And anyway, I don’t remember Papa going anywhere with us, even when we went to Mama’s family’s summer home in Sumperk. The Institut für Radiumforschung, that was his life, not his wife and daughters.”
Her tone changed from contempt to bitterness. I might be a vulgar American who didn’t know the map of Austria, but it was her father who’d let her down. As I rode to the lobby, I tossed a nickel. Tails, Benjamin Dzornen had never slept with any of his students. Heads, he was Kitty Binder’s father. Three times in a row, I lifted my hand and saw Thomas Jefferson’s profile. Conclusive proof.
15
THE DOCTOR’S DILEMMA
I CALLED LOTTY when I got home. “I just left Herta Colonna’s apartment,” I said. “You might have met in Vienna when you were eight or nine and she was Herta Dzornen. She and her sister Bettina were Benjamin Dzornen’s daughters.”
“I don’t remember them,” Lotty answered. “Dzornen—that name is familiar. Isn’t he a scientist?”
“Nobel Prize, Manhattan Project. Martina Saginor’s thesis adviser back when he was part of some radium institute in Vienna.”
“Oh!” I heard Lotty suck in a breath. “He was K?the’s—Kitty’s—father?”
“She thinks he was; Herta says her father was an honorable man who would never have had affairs, least of all with a student. Herta repeated what you said, that when Kitty first came to Chicago, she made a royal nuisance of herself. She pestered the Dzornens, she had a tantrum at the University of Chicago; she even went out to the lab in Argonne to a new pile, whatever that is, and made a fuss. Benjamin put some sort of pressure on her; Herta claims not to know what, but after that, Kitty left the family alone.
“Judy arrived years later as Act Two, trying to extort money from Herta, maybe from the sister Bettina as well, although she had moved to the West Coast. I’m pretty sure Martin went to see both Herta and her brother, Julius. Neither will admit it, but their body language is talking loudly. And Julius is an odd duck.”
I was disappointed that Lotty didn’t know the family—I was hoping she might know why Julius thought a detective should have shown up fifty years ago.
“He feels guilty about something,” Lotty said. “You don’t need to be Oprah’s tame psychiatrist to realize that, but it could be anything. Did he see his father do something unspeakable? Or was his father unable to protect him from assault? Hyde Park was a dangerous community in the 1950s. Can you uncover violent crimes from that era?”
“Only with more blood, sweat and whatever than I can provide. Maybe not even then—the police don’t create files for all the nonproductive calls they respond to. That’s more in the nature of communal knowledge at the district.”
“Would knowing what happened fifty years ago help you find Martin?” Lotty asked.
“How can I say? I had one idea that may be really far-fetched, but what if Julius discovered that his father’s Nobel Prize was bogus?”
“Bogus?” Lotty’s voice crackled across the line. “These prizes are genuine, it’s not like saying you served with the Navy SEALs, thinking no one could check the story. You are one person, the eyes of the world are on you.”
“Bogus is the wrong word,” I conceded. “Herta was very belligerent about Martina Saginor not being a good scientist. But Martina was Dzornen’s student: What if he took credit for work that she really did? Dzornen let Martina and Kitty languish in Vienna while he spent the war safely in the U.S. Julius was apparently another gifted math and science student. If he went back through old research papers and found that his father stole Martina Saginor’s work, that would completely end his respect for his father. It also explains why Dzornen never discussed the matter with his wife or daughter.”
“I suppose Martin Binder might have stumbled on the same evidence, if it were available,” Lotty said doubtfully, “but why would he then disappear?”
“Maybe Herta killed him to preserve her father’s memory,” I suggested flippantly. “She has a photograph of herself as a kid in the mountains carrying a hunting rifle.”
“All the wealthy Jewish women back then aped the rich Gentiles. They stalked deer, they shot rabbits. My grandparents had a place in the mountains where friends used to come to shoot, although my grandparents didn’t. My Oma Herschel didn’t like blood sports.”
I brought the conversation back to Martina. “Do you remember something, anything, from your childhood, an argument you overheard, that might show Martina was angry or bitter over her professor’s award?”
“Oh, Victoria, I was eight or nine the last time I saw her. That she was in love with science I remember because she used to take K?the and me to her laboratory. At home she was awkward, but at the Institute, her eyes came to life. Whether she was as gifted as she was enthusiastic, how can I possibly know? What attention did you pay to adult conversations when you were that age?”