Times last week—’ ‘Stabbed to death?’ ‘First hit on the head all over. Then stabbed as if the person went completely crazy when doing it. Cut to pieces, hacked. But this article I read — At the bottom corner of the page, could easily be missed, so I don’t know what attracted me to it, said an unidentified man was found stabbed to death with multiple wounds in his apartment on Avenue J. Neighbors had complained of the smell for four days, so they called the police. Or he’d been there for four days and they only started smelling it for three or two. When it said Avenue J, I wondered if it could be him. He’d taken over Ida’s apartment when she died, which was their whole family’s once — you remember, when you were all young. How much older would he be than you?’ ‘Seven years, eight. But because I think he’s a few years older than Jerry, maybe even more. But good God. Dinners all the time there. Fridays. I can’t believe it. In the same apartment.’ ‘That’s what I thought when I first read the article. When it said unidentified man I almost knew it was him.’ ‘But Avenue J’s a long avenue. Thousands of people must live on it, so I don’t see how you could have thought it was him.’ ‘It just entered my mind. Because he was such a loner, maybe. And he was so strange, I heard, these last few years — worse than he ever was — that who knows what kind of people he might have hung around with or let in for what. His sister didn’t. And he’s the only person I know who lives on Avenue J since his mother died. But that’s just half the story, what I told you. Hanna — I’m not going to get you in trouble with your school?’ ‘No, what?’ ‘What?’ ‘His sister Hanna.’ ‘She called me a few days after he was found and told me it all. The funeral was only last Sunday. I don’t know why it slipped my mind not to call you when I found out. I guess I didn’t think you’d be that interested or just that you’re so occupied with all the work you do and just the problems with small children — sickness and things.’ ‘But I don’t understand you. He was my favorite cousin when I was a boy. So really the only one I ever got close to, since I hardly knew the others. He and Hanna, but he would also come over to the house, take Alex and me places.’ ‘That I didn’t know. But it was at Pinelawn or something. A veteran’s cemetery on Long Island. Funeral and burial both. Hanna was hysterical most of the call. But she said that’s where he always wanted to be buried, to save on the cost for them, since he’d been almost penniless for years. Taps and everything, she said they had at it; beautiful chapel and immaculate grounds, so as nice a place to be as anywhere. And everything except the rabbi, since she wanted her own, and half the casket paid by the government. I didn’t go because I didn’t know of it and I couldn’t have got out anyway and I don’t think Jerry would have driven me.’ ‘Sure he would have if he wasn’t supposed to be out of town that day. He’s told me Nat was his favorite cousin too.’ ‘I wish I had known that. But how they couldn’t identify him immediately when they knew he lived in that apartment I don’t understand. Maybe he just never went out much lately or only when neighbors and the super couldn’t see him. He had that kind of peculiarity in him. What I’m saying is his appearance might have changed so much recently — starving himself, if he was so penniless, though I’m sure he could have eaten anytime he wanted at Hanna’s or her girls’ or borrowed if he needed from her — that they didn’t recognize him. Or else—’ ‘Come on, don’t go off like that.’ ‘Why? Since he lost his shoe store, or walked away from it — the story’s never been straight — he’s been peddling toys up and down Broadway and not making a dime from it. He was sloppy, dirty, half the time unshaven for days, Hanna said. Nothing like his father, who was always perfectly groomed and spotless — so nobody wanted to buy from him and he was stuck with what he wanted to sell. Hanna said the police were letting her into his apartment for the first time this week and I bet she finds nothing but toys and thousands of his old jazz records.’ ‘About his appearance change, I bumped into him last year at around 116th and Broadway and he didn’t look much different than he did at Dad’s funeral, only paunchier. We had a nice chat on the street. I wanted to take him in for coffee, but he said he had to deliver the boxes he was carrying.’ ‘Those were the toys. He was too ashamed to tell you he’d become a peddler. But I didn’t know you saw him.’ ‘I told you then. I was staying with you that weekend. I even brought up the records with him — that when we were kids he used to bring us into his room to play them for us — but he said he got rid of them twenty years ago.’ ‘Anyway, the story is that he went to the veteran’s office in Brooklyn to collect his pension check-no one gets them mailed, or social security checks, in his neighborhood, Hanna said. Afraid they’ll be stolen from their mailboxes, if the boxes still even have locks on them. And then he cashed it at another desk and left with a man he seemed to only have just met there, people said. It was obviously this man who went home with him and killed him for the money he saw he had. The door wasn’t broken in or fiddled with. The police said it looked exactly like something somebody would do who walked in with him — a friend, or someone later let in. Nathaniel couldn’t have had much money if it was a veteran’s pension he was on. He was nothing but a buck private, if I remember, and had no disability from the war. Though who knows what Dad might have arranged for him years ago and even what that man might have thought he had. He saw two hundred dollars in Nathaniel’s hands, he imagined two thousand in his home. But Dad did that for Nathaniel’s father when he fell off a stepladder through a window at work. Workmen’s Compensation and his insurance company wanted to give him the bare minimum — said it was his fault plus something about the store not having him properly on the payroll. Dad spoke to some people and maybe even fixed things with some schmears and got him full disability pay for life and also for Ida after Jack died. Your father was very smart about things like that when people didn’t work for it or deserve it and my guess is that Ida asked Dad to do that for Nathaniel too when she saw the kind of character he was going to end up as. He’d do anything for that family — there was no better brother and son. And then Nathaniel, as the way I see it, with a temper sometimes like his mother’s and Grandma Tetch. You remember all the stories I’ve told you about her. She used to beat her children with broomsticks, Ida included. That whole family, except your father, were either weaklings or violently nuts. Anyway, when the man wanted the money, Nathaniel must have fought and talked back like I think he would because of his temper, and that’s when he got beaten on the head several times and stabbed when he kept on fighting. You have to admire him if that’s what happened, though I don’t know how many times your father told him, when he had his shoestore and there was a chance he might get robbed — you know, they all worshiped Dad and usually took his advice — to just give the money up and anything else they wanted.’ ‘What a way to go though. Just awful, awful.’ ‘Terrible, I know. And they don’t think they’ll ever get the guy. Somebody nobody ever saw before in the veteran’s office, if it was him. And if it wasn’t him who did it, then the police are really stumped, according to Hanna. Not that she wants him caught. She’s afraid if he is, then his friends or the killer out on bail will come after her for no better reason then that he’ll think she pressed the police to catch him or she knows something more about him than she does. She knows nothing, she says, and wants to keep it that way, so she’s not pressing. That’s what she told me. You ever hear anything like that? But look at me. Before all this about Nathaniel I was going to say nothing happened in my life since I last spoke to you, and in a way that’s still true. But what’s the best time to call you so I get you and can speak to everyone else?’ ‘Six.’ Then that’s when I’ll call. Not tomorrow, since I just spoke to you, but the next day or the weekend. I’m tired now but I’m sure I’ll be in much better shape to talk next time.’ ‘Stay well, then.’ ‘Thank you and thanks for calling, and I love you.’ ‘Same here with me, Mom.’ ‘What?’ I said much love to you too and I hope you’re feeling better — have had enough sleep, aren’t so tired — you know, the next time.’ ‘Something must be wrong with our connection all of a sudden, or this hearing aid. It works and it doesn’t. I think it’s even made my hearing worse, for it was never that bad where I didn’t hear anything. Let me adjust it…. There, now say something.’ ‘Hello, hello, I’m speaking, can you hear me, Mom’?’ ‘No, nothing, just faintly, as if you’re a million miles away. What time did you say was the best to call, and loudly’ ‘Six, six.’ ‘What?’ ‘Six! Six!’ ‘Oh, I’ll just take my chances and call some time this Saturday, but only after I get this rotten thing fixed. I’m sorry, dear. Bye.’”