Death Of A Dream Maker (30 page)

“Everything,” Herbert said firmly.

And so, with a single well-chosen song, it was clear
that Herbert had won Seth Rosenbloom over. The young man spoke for
over an hour. He began by answering their questions about his
sister, Karen.

“Karen is the smartest one of us all,” he said. “And
that really pisses my mother off. She wanted Jake or Davy to take
over the business. She thought Karen ought to stay home and have
grandchildren for her.” He smiled bitterly. “Karen compounded the
problem by filing for divorce from this schmuck she never should
have married in the first place. They'd only been married a couple
of years and Mommie dearest was embarrassed, having invited all of
New York to the nuptials.”

“Why did your sister file for divorce so soon?” T.S.
asked.

“She was married to a creep,” Seth answered
promptly.

“Who did Karen marry?” T.S. persisted. There had been
no mention of an ex-husband in any of the family gossip so far.

“This jerk named Howard Friedman. Grew up down the
block. His mother was best friends with my mother. Karen dated him
in junior high, hated him in senior high, and re-met him a couple
years into college. He'd gone from being an ugly creep into being a
handsome creep.” Seth shrugged. “At least Karen thought so. She had
been butting heads with our mother for twenty years by that point.
For one shining moment they were finally in agreement. Before Karen
came to her senses, she had married him. Turned out Howard didn't
really want to work. Thought he ought to be given a cushy job at
Uncle Max's factory. He'd married Karen for the money he thought
she'd inherit one day. He didn't like it when she went on to
business school. There were a lot of other things, too...” Seth's
voice faded.

“Those are all problems. But to end a marriage over
them? And so quickly?” T.S. said.

“Look, Howard Friedman is not just a creep, he is a
creep.”
Seth swallowed the remainder of his gimlet and
joined Herbert in ordering another round. “He came on to me, okay?
I kept in touch with Karen after I got kicked out of the family.
Two years ago, we went out one night to have dinner and drank too
much. Karen got sick and went home early. Stupid me. I stayed to
have a couple more drinks with Howard. He was very insistent and I
thought I ought to make nice to my sister's husband. A couple
drinks later he made a pass at me. Grabbed me under the table. I
threw a drink in his face and left him with the check. The next day
I started asking around. And I found out that he was a very active
member of our street community, shall I say?”

T.S. was perplexed. “What's that mean?” he asked.

“He liked to pick up men along the riverfront and in
the rough bars, that's what it means,” Seth explained. “To which,
normally, I might say, who cares? But he was married to my sister,
and my sister didn't know, and his behavior was putting her in
danger. Do I need to explain?”

“I understand,” T.S. said.

“And besides that, if some woman wants to be married
to a gay man, who am I to judge?” Seth added. “But Karen is my
sister and I love her and she deserves better than that. She
deserves to be completely loved. So I told her. And she dumped him
within a week. So far she's healthy. And Howard Friedman is still a
creep.”

“Surely your parents would understand,” T.S.
said.

Seth sighed. “Karen wouldn't tell them the truth. She
struck a deal with the creep. She got the apartment, and Howard
gave her the divorce. In return, she kept quiet. He didn't want his
parents to know, and Karen didn't want our parents to know. Which
is why, according to my mom, Karen is a selfish, career-hungry,
power-mad feminist out to destroy her brothers and the role of men
in the world in general.”

“That's a tall order for one woman,” T.S. said.

“You know what I think?” Seth said. “My mother is
jealous of Karen. Karen can do anything she sets her mind to. And
while my mother is hateful, she's also smart. She's smarter than my
father, but she always had to take a backseat to him. Mom could
have run Max Rose Fashions herself. And part of her may have wanted
to.” He shrugged. “So does she blame the world for her lack of
chances? No, she blames her own daughter for not suffering quietly
like she did. I do not understand women.” He looked up and grinned.
“Fortunately, I don't have to.”

“Why did she quit her job at Max Rose Fashions?”
Herbert asked.

Seth explained that Karen had quit abruptly after
discovering that Davy was likely stealing from the firm. “She
couldn't bear to turn him in,” Seth said. “And she knew it would
come out soon enough anyway. She just wanted to get away from the
whole mess.” He hesitated for a moment. “Another reason was that
Karen thought someone was trying to set her up. She said that
financial irregularities kept popping up in her accounts. She
wanted out before she took the fall.”

“Who was it?” T.S. asked. “Who would do that to
her?”

Seth looked miserable. “Maybe Davy. He was never mean
like that, but if he had been gambling, he might have done it.”

“Can we talk to her about it?” T.S. pressed on. “Find
out more about what she thinks?”

Seth shook his head. “Maybe in a couple of weeks.
She's gone right now.”

“Gone?” Herbert asked.

Seth nodded. “She couldn't take it anymore. The
pressure from the family, the phone calls from the media, the mess
about the new ownership structure. On top of it all, her ex called
wanting part of the money she inherited from Max. So she took off
this morning for a vacation. No one knows where.”

“No one?” Herbert asked.

Seth looked up defiantly. “No one but me. And I'm not
telling.”

They switched the subject and asked Seth about the
rivalry between his brothers. Davy and Jake had hated each other
bitterly, perhaps for good reason, Seth confirmed. “Jake did
everything right on the surface and Davy always did everything
wrong,” he explained. “But everyone always liked Davy better
anyway, especially Uncle Max. He couldn't help it. Jake is such a
pompous jerk. He wouldn't know a real human emotion if it fell on
him from the Empire State Building.”

Sabrina Rosenbloom was a sleaze, but harmless, Seth
offered under questioning. “I'm nothing to her, so I rarely saw her
in action. She knows her tricks don't affect me in the least. And
Uncle Max never mentioned her to me again once they got married.
Not once in the past three years.”

His last disclosure was also interesting. He had been
visited twice in the last three days by his brother Jake, Seth
said. Karen had been approached as well. “They want us to join in a
lawsuit against the estate,” he explained. “The rest of the family
wants to have Max's latest will declared invalid and the trusts he
set up declared illegal. Supposedly because your aunt exercised
undue influence over him when he was in failing mental health. Hah!
Good luck proving that one. But if the family won the lawsuit—or
forced your aunt to reach a settlement—his estate would be divided
between most of the family. It's a lot of money. It's worth a
lawsuit to them, believe me.” But Seth was not joining, he added.
And neither was Karen. They were both ready to move on. Move on
away from the Rosenblooms forever.

By the time Seth called a halt to the questioning,
they were tipsy from too much good cheer. Herbert and T.S. said
good-bye and stumbled out into the night, elated at their success.
Grady had waited patiently and made no comment as they staggered
into the backseat. He was no stranger to serious tippling.

“An unusual young man,” Herbert remarked during the
long ride uptown. The backseat of the limousine was comfortable and
he fought to stay awake. He would drop T.S. off, then ask Grady to
drive him to his apartment in Queens. “I wonder what kind of lawyer
he’d be.”

“A very good one, I should think,” T.S. replied. He
coughed in embarrassment. “I must thank you, Herbert,” he said.
“You saved me in there. I could not seem to connect with the young
man. It was too much for me, I suppose. Too different from what I
am used to. I'm just too... I don't know. I'm just too
something.”

Herbert patted T.S.'s arm. “Don't worry. It was
nothing. I knew I must take action or the young man would not be
responsive. It seemed to me that you had a branch—no, I believe it
is a stick—up your...” He hesitated, thinking hard. “What is that
expression?”

“Never mind,” T.S. said grimly. “I know the one you
mean.”

Detectives, departing paramedics, and an anxious
security guard swarmed over the cutting-room floor. Casey sat
glumly on a chair next to Auntie Lil, silent and seething. Her head
was swathed in a spectacular bandage that obscured most of her
brow. Auntie Lil was unharmed but equally unhappy— Lieutenant
Abromowitz was on the scene.

“Let me get this straight,” the lieutenant began. “A
person you haven't laid eyes on in thirty years calls you up and
asks you to meet her on the darkened floor of a closed factory in
the middle of a series of murders. And you say, 'Sure, let me get
my hat. I'll be right over.'” He stared down at Auntie Lil and
waited for her answer.

She nodded miserably, ashamed of her stupidity, and
embarrassed that the lieutenant had been the one to catch her at
it. “I thought the feds had taken over the case,” she said in a
small voice. “Why isn't that nice Frank O'Conner questioning
me?”

“Because that nice Frank O'Conner has moved on to
more important things. He doesn't care about these murders. He has
bigger—much bigger—fish to fry. So the feds have thoughtfully
dumped the Rosenblooms back in my lap.” Abromowitz hooked his
thumbs in his belt loops and rocked back on his heels. A toothpick
that dangled from his mouth bobbed up and down as he spoke. “Look,
Miss Hubbert, no hard feelings, okay? I have come to accept the
fact that you were sent into my life to plague me. You interfere
with my investigations, you confuse the issues, you bring political
power crashing down on my head. You seem to be more difficult to
get rid of than a bad case of athlete's foot. But I have never
wished to see you harmed. On the contrary, I am not happy that
someone attempted to murder you tonight. Particularly in my
precinct and in the middle of my case.” He sighed. “Can we agree
that maybe I really do have your best interests at heart? After
all, I am the police and it is my job to find the killers.”

“You thought I killed Max,” she said in a wounded
voice.

“Miss Hubbert, you know very well that I never
thought you killed him,” Abromowitz protested. “And I never really
thought you were blackmailing him, either. I just needed some
leverage to be absolutely sure that you were telling me everything
you knew. Put yourself in my shoes. I'm pulled off all of my cases
and handed this homicide for one reason and one reason only.
Because I'm Jewish. And the powers-that-be have decreed that when a
prominent Jew gets murdered in New York City, a not-so-prominent
Jew has to solve it. It plays better in our communities,
understand?”

Auntie Lil nodded.

“So here I am, under pressure from the press and my
own people to get some progress made quick. This means that when
even a small amount of physical evidence shows that you might be
involved, I am under an obligation to pursue it. If I came on
strong, it's just because my nerves are stretched thin and I have
no margin for error here. I do have your best interests at
heart.”

“I concede that you have my best interests at heart,”
Auntie Lil admitted stiffly.

“Good. Now, let's start from the top. I think someone
wanted to kill you tonight and make it look like you had a little
accident while snooping around the factory. I want to find out
who.”

Auntie Lil went over the phone call from Rosalie
Benpensata and described their journey to Max Rose Fashions. No,
she could not identify her attackers. At least she didn't think so.
She wasn't even sure if they had been men, women, or a combination
of both. Perhaps if she saw their outlines again, she might know
them. She couldn't be sure.

“Did you actually recognize the voice as Rosalie
Benpensata's?” Abromowitz wanted to know. “After that many years,
you remembered her voice?”

“I didn't recognize her voice exactly,” Auntie Lil
admitted. “But who else would know about her? She referred to a
favor I had done for her thirty years ago. It had to have been
Rosalie. No one else knew about it.”

“No one else at all?” Abromowitz asked.

“No one else who could call and impersonate Rosalie.
Max is dead. Maybe Abe knew she had come to me about his advances,
but he has difficulty speaking without losing his breath. He
couldn't possibly have called. Besides, it was a woman's
voice.”

Abromowitz yelled over his shoulder to a detective
hovering nearby. “Is Dave through with the personnel files yet? And
where the hell are the owners?”

The man shrugged. “Some guy named Brody is on the
way,” he told the lieutenant “We couldn't get an answer at any of
the Rosenbloom numbers. We tried them all.”

“And does Dave have this Benpensata woman's address
yet?” Abromowitz asked impatiently.

The detective looked bored. “How should I know? He's
on another floor.”

“Well, go find him!” Abromowitz roared, losing his
ternper at the only person nearby he was allowed to lose his temper
at. The detective scurried off and the lieutenant turned back to
Auntie Lil. “This is a mess,” he said. He stared intently at Auntie
Lil. “You
are
telling me everything you know, aren't
you?”

“Yes,” Auntie Lil said immediately.

Simultaneously, Casey rang in with a resounding,
“No!”

“Which is it?” He looked back and forth between the
two women, but neither spoke.

The building's security guard interrupted,
approaching Abromowitz nervously. He was an old man and his hands
shook. If the attackers had escaped out the front lobby, he would
have keeled over from a heart attack. But according to him, no one
had either entered or left that way.