Death in Twilight by Jason Fields Read Free Book Online Page A

or three times I spoke with him,” Finkelstein said.
    “Really?
That’s
what you’ve got for me? ‘He seemed
nice
?’”
    “Well … ”
    “You can do better than that,” Aaron said in his best coaxing, just-between-us voice. “Was he a good cop?”
    “Sure. Or at least I never heard anything.”
    “Really? Nothing?”
    “Well, one always hears things,” Shemtov said grudgingly.
    Aaron waited.
    “All I’ve heard was that he and his partner … ”
    “Gersh?”
    “Yes, Gersh. All I heard was that they did a little more business than usual with the black market. Maybe that they didn’t treat the citizens with much respect,” Shemtov said cautiously.
    “That’s it?” Aaron asked. “Nothing more specific?”
    Shemtov shook his head.
    “What can you tell me about him personally?”
    “That I truly know nothing about. I mean, I know he wasn’t from Miasto originally, that he didn’t have any family here. I think he was religious, but that’s it.”
    Aaron was sure Shemtov knew more, but judging by the tone of the man’s voice, he wouldn’t get it out of him without inflicting pain.
    “Anything you can tell me about Gersh, Leon?”.
    “Again, we didn’t work the same shifts, but I will tell you that he’s not someone who’s easy to like. Actually, if I think about it for a minute, it might be impossible to like him.”
    “How so?”
    “Well, to start with, he knows he’s better than everyone else,” Shemtov said. “Some people think it, but he knows it.”
    “Okay.”
    “Also, his eyes look like he borrowed them from a corpse. Nothing there at all.”
    “Well then, he has plenty in common with his friend Berson,” Aaron said. “So, where is Berson now? Nobody’s mentioned a coroner.”
    “We thought it best to get him out of sight as quickly as possible,” Shemtov said. “We took him to cellar a block from where he was killed.”
    “Where exactly?
    “It’s 331 Varlamow. He’s in a basement under some rubble if you want to see him.”
    “It could be helpful, though I’m hardly a doctor,” Aaron said. “Anything else you want to tell me? No, scratch that. Anything else I need to know?”
    Shemtov smiled with sardonic sympathy.
    “Other than who did it, I can’t think of anything.”
    Aaron stood, then leaned over to massage his legs for a minute. He thanked Shemtov for the little help he’d been able to give.
    Before leaving the building, Aaron turned and knocked on Blaustein’s door. He got no answer and felt no urge to linger.
    The cold was no surprise when he had walked through the miasma of the crowd, past the guards and back onto the heather gray streets, but it temporarily blinded him to his surroundings. He shook himself, raised the collar of his coat and started toward the hospital.

Chapter 5
    A aron Kaminski walked toward Breslaw Hospital under the gray light of noon. If anyone knew Berson’s business, it would be his partner. People became intimate during long nights on patrol. Aaron knew it from his own experience. He remembered many nights spent bored to death, waiting for something to happen and hoping that it never would. Talk helped to fill the time and to deal with the nerves.
    Aaron figured that Martin Gersh might not have witnessed the killing of his partner, but there was a good chance he would know what was behind it.
    The only concern Aaron had was the severity of Gersh’s injury. He assumed it was bad, only desperation drove people to seek help from the abattoirs the ghetto’s hospitals had become.
    Aaron was forced to make his way more slowly than he would have liked. His route led him straight through the ghetto’s mostly lively district. Everywhere, despite the cold, clumps of men gathered to sell the literal clothes off their backs to each other. It was a race to the depths of poverty.
    One pale man in a suit made up mostly of unidentifiable stains held up a small dressing gown made of fine satin, fit only for a child of fewer than two years.