“What is this?” Alenia asked, pointing to the pile.
“It’s my treasure from the Swedge estate sale.”
Alenia scrunched up her face. “I didn’t like the way he looked at me. I told Harry and you know what he said?”
Harry’s high blood pressure and diabetes were a fatal combination in the bedroom. Joe liked Harry and rationalized bedding his wife as doing him a favor. “Not to be half naked when you went for your walk?” Joe asked as he rummaged through the mess.
“No. To smile and tell him to fuck off.”
A check laying at the edge of the pile caught Joe’s eye. It was dated October 2, 1975 made payable to Westfield’s only Jewish temple, Temple Emanuel, for $5,000.
Alenia playfully squirmed on his lap. “Looks like garbage. I’m still tired. Let’s go back to bed.”
Joe let Alenia’s suggestion pass without comment. He stared at the check and took a gulp from the mug. “The Five Books of Moses on the kitchen table, the rabbi at the cemetery, and a donation to a temple. The man was closest to being an anti-Semite as one can be. Doesn’t make sense.”
She leaned back to nibble on Joe’s ear. “Jozef… I don’t care.”
Joe moved his head away. He rummaged through the mess. A sheet of carbon paper was sandwiched between a sheet of onionskin typing paper and a faded photo clipped out of a newspaper of a man in a glass booth. Joe strained to make out the face. Only one word was legible in the caption beneath. “Eichmann,” he said. “This was taken at his trial in Israel. Do you know who Eichmann was?”
“He killed the Jews in the Great Patriotic War,” Alenia said flatly. The Great Patriotic War was what the Kremlin dubbed World War II and drummed into children.
“You’re as smart as you are beautiful,” Joe said, patting her rear.
“Many of my family died in the war,” she said without emotion. “Maybe Mr. Swedge liked Nazis.”
“Preston was a lot of things, but I doubt that he was a Nazi lover.” Joe turned to the carbon paper. He hadn’t seen or handled the stuff in years. The paper was severely creased looking as if any manipulation would cause it to split. “Do me a favor. Get a pencil and the tweezers from the top right drawer in my desk.”
Alenia popped the G-string with her half-inch French manicured nails as she walked to the den. Joe felt where Alenia used the daggers to scratch the middle of his back. She returned with the pencil and tweezers tucked in the half-dollar size patch covering her nether region.
Joe held out his hand. Alenia snapped the items into his palm. Using the pencil’s eraser, Joe tried to hold the carbon sheet down on the table. “This isn’t working. Give me your fingers.”
Alenia held out her hands, pushing a two carat diamond toward Joe’s face. He guided the nails on her index fingers to the edges of the carbon paper. “Don’t move,” he ordered.
Joe lifted the carbon paper with the tweezers just enough to slide the pencil under the flap, ever so slowly unfolding it along the crease. “You can let go,” he said.
“Do I get a reward?” Alenia asked, puckering her lips.
“Later,” he replied, using the tweezers to hold the carbon paper to the light. Alenia snuggled next to him. Joe read the typewriter impressions aloud, “31may1944. Photo Reconnaissance Fifteenth Air Force: Mission 60 PRS/462 Can D Exposures 4056-8. Height 27,000 feet. Aerial photographs of Manowitz, Poland; Synthetic rubber production facilities; also noted barracks and railroad lines to the concentration camp Auschwitz.”
Joe put the carbon paper and tweezers on the table. He studied the loose-leaf sized map. “I don’t believe what I just read.” Stunned, he leaned back in the chair. Fumbling with the cellophane wrapper on the pack of cigarettes, he handed the pack to Alenia.
With the zip of a nail, she removed the wrapper and opened the pack. She handed a cigarette to Joe and took one for herself.
“What’s got you in this punk?” Alenia asked. She moved a chair away from the table and sat.
“The word is funk,” Joe corrected, taking a huge pull on the cigarette. He opened the door a crack to air out the growing haze of smoke. “The American Air Force took pictures of the Auschwitz concentration camp and didn’t do a fucking thing. You see this map?”