Deadly Pedigree - By Jimmy Fox Page 0,64

of the important-looking stuff. Hawty strikes again!

Through an old pair of glasses mended with Band-Aids, he perused his mail. Bill, bill, credit-card statement, bill, bill, collection agency, last notice, another one…and a thick tan envelope that had seen several previous mailings. A note taped to it read: “Came postage due at the office. You owe me $4.50. Hawty.” The envelope had lots of small-denomination stamps, the kind that fall victim to rate hikes and are rarely used afterward. No return address.

Nick had a vague sense of familiarity with the scrawled handwriting that had directed the package to him. The most recent postmark was Monday–the day after Max Corban had been murdered!

Yes, he remembered now: he had seen this handwriting that day in his office, when the old man had written down his address and phone number, and the name Balazar.

Nick ripped into the envelope.

It was from the poor old guy, all right, probably mailed just before whoever it was got to him. He must have known something awful was about to happen, and wanted the information safe; probably didn’t expect Nick to get there in time. Nick now recalled the urgent tone during their telephone conversation.

He pictured Corban’s street in his mind: wasn’t there a mailbox just outside the house? Yes, of course; two actually. The old man had cheated the murderer of ultimate victory. His envelope was in one of the mailboxes as Nick walked just a few inches beside it.

That was Sunday; the next day, the envelope was picked up.

What Nick found inside was a leftover, deadly bombshell, a long-buried remnant of old hates, like those being dug up in French and German gardens even today.

Looking at the beautiful woman sleeping on his couch, he understood.

“This is all about you, Zola, isn’t it?” he whispered. “About keeping you from ever knowing what she did.”

.

19

Nick held in his hands–trembling from excitement–a mass of photocopied evidence proving that Zola was indeed of the Balazar family, but the daughter of concentration-camp survivors. They had been part of Hyam’s collateral line–from an uncle who never emigrated–and thus distant cousins of Natalie Armiger. Had been, because Natalie Armiger let them die. She had refused to sponsor them in their petition to immigrate to America, in those years of anguish, confusion, and desperation after the WWII.

Nick wondered how Corban had come to possess the documents he found in the thick envelope. There were communications from resettlement and repatriation groups Nick had never heard of, along with the expected ones. The story these copied documents told was vivid and moving. Nick came to understand the motives of the broken old man a little better, too. It wasn’t merely his stock-market losses that had driven him to confront Armiger, though that might have pushed him over the edge: with a single-minded determination and bravery, he was one man fighting an immortal dragon. Nick thought of his own moral waffling and felt a new pang of self-revulsion.

While Zola slept peacefully in the dim light of his desk lamp, he sat down, stuggled to stop his inebriated head from spinning, and pondered the material Corban had died to transmit.

Among the millions of displaced persons throughout Europe in 1946, there were three sick, emaciated young Jews, standing together in a line for food at a refugee camp in Germany. Max Corban, meet Maurice and Erna Balazar. Teenagers, who had seen things adults shouldn’t. All three were from the southwestern part of the country, Maurice and Erna having lived near Baden-Baden. Maurice and Erna had just been married.

Nick learned that Maurice Balazar was descended from Hyam’s uncle, who had remained in Europe; a copy of Maurice’s Nazi-issued ahnenpass proved the link.

That love should survive in a human being after that descent into Hell; that, before their bodies and minds had begun to heal, before their thoughts could readily go beyond the next bowl of gruel, these shaved skeletons held hands and were able to love–strange and wonderful!

What a paradoxical species we human beings are, Nick thought: capable of such intense cruelty and such beauty of spirit.

The three refugees became close friends as they slowly recovered their health, more or less, and got a modicum of sanity back. Their bewilderment and grief began to give way to an awareness of their new freedom–and their new dilemma. Should they go to their old homes? Or to Israel, where there was renewed talk of statehood and where they could expect welcoming arms but perhaps no greater stability and safety? Or to the United