“Ms. Colonna, I don’t want to torment you, and I certainly won’t broadcast your secrets to the world, but if you told me what really went on between your father and Kitty Binder, it might put some old ghosts to rest.”
“Nothing went on between my father and Kitty Binder.”
“What about the bank account in Lincolnwood?”
“How did you know—oh, what are you doing?”
“I’m coming upstairs, ma’am. This is too difficult a conversation to hold over the phone.”
I put my car flashers on and walked over to her building entrance. The doorman called to announce me, most unwillingly: my careful grooming didn’t make me look any more trustworthy than I had on my first visit.
Herta was waiting in her doorway, one hand at her throat. She was using a cane, which she leaned on heavily as she led me to the living room—sighing equally heavily. When she had carefully lowered herself onto the white couch, I again pulled the tubular metal chair over near her.
“When did you find out about the bank account?” I asked.
“When Papa was dying,” she whispered. “I used to go down to Hyde Park two or three times a week to help Mama. Julius was useless, you’ve seen him, by that time he was just sitting in his bedroom playing the guitar and smoking—marijuana. He wouldn’t even come down the stairs to help Mama lift Papa to change his sheets.”
She was letting herself be distracted by old grievances, shying away from the hard part of the narrative. I sat very still, not an intrusive person at all, just one of her photographs, listening, not judging.
“One morning when Mama was at the grocery, Papa told me he needed my help. He wanted me to look after the bank account, but not to let Mama or Julius or my sister Bettina know about it.”
“Did he say why it had to be a secret?”
“He was afraid if I talked to Julius, he’d try to get the money, and he thought Bettina would tell Mama. She suffered so much from all those rumors about K?the Saginor, he didn’t want to add to her pain. Better that she think she would never be bothered by the Saginors again.”
“Did he tell you why he’d set up the account?” I asked. “If the stories about him and Martina Saginor were merely rumors . . .” I let my voice trail away suggestively.
“Of course they were just ugly stories,” Herta said, indignant. “He felt terrible that Martina had been stuck in Austria during the war. Papa said that after the war, when he learned what had become of Martina Saginor, he owed it to her memory to do something for her daughter. I protested that he owed K?the nothing: she was married, she had her own life. And if Mama found out, she would have thought all the rumors were true, you know, what the neighbors said when K?the came to the house back in 1956. But he said that was how he got K?the to leave us alone, by giving her some money.”
Maybe that’s what Dzornen told his daughter Herta, but I didn’t think it was true, and I wasn’t convinced she believed it, either.
“Was the bank account for Kitty herself or for her child?” I asked.
“He gave K?the a little money when she first showed up, so she and her husband could afford a down payment on a house, then when she had her baby, Papa put more in the account so Judy Binder could go to university, or get business training, whatever she wanted when she grew up. He could only put a little money in every quarter, otherwise Mama would have noticed, so he wanted me to promise to keep adding to the account. He gave me the account number and deposit slips. You know, it was before ATMs and everything.”
“And did you keep putting money into the account?” I asked.
Herta was twisting the cane round and round, digging a hole in the Chinese carpet at her feet. “No,” she finally whispered. “Stuart—my husband—he said Kitty was a blackmailer. Stuart sent one of his law firm’s investigators over to see what the Binders were like, so that we could decide whether Judy was worth supporting. Judy was thirteen but she was already, well, precocious if you know what I mean.”
I hadn’t heard the word used in that way for a long time. Precocious as in sexually mature for her age, not musically or mathematically.
“And we had three children, that wasn’t cheap, braces, you know, college education.”
“So you took the money out of the account and used it for your own children?” I tried hard to keep anger and judgment out of my voice, but I must not have done a good job because Herta flinched.