“Nobody,” Adler lied. “Vierhaus sent for me.”
“Why?”
“I told you, to meet me.” A sudden pain fired deep in his chest. He began to rub his chest with the flat of his hand.
“Why did he want to meet you? Did he want you to make some earrings for him? Or fix his cuckoo clock? Why did he send for you, Adler?”
“He lectured me to do better in the future.”
“You are lying.”
“No, no, I . .
“Shh, shh, shh, Herman.” Another voice spoke up, this one from the shadows behind the lamp. “You are lying and we know it.’’
“You know how we know you are lying?” Still another voice said. “Because you are the best of the Judenhascher who work for him. The best, Adler, how does that make you feel, eh?”
“Did he bring you in to give you a medal, Herman? To kiss you on both cheeks and congratulate you for being such a good Jewish Nazi? Is that why you were there, Herman?”
“And what do you get for this?” The first voice said from the darkness. “Your room? It is not much bigger than a prison cell. You do not have enough food to feed an ant. They give you ration food and a few marks, isn’t that true? Good God, man, how do you live with yourself?”
“Do you ever consider the consequences of your actions?”
“It is the law!” Adler shrieked. “You are the traitors, not I.”
“It is not law,” the gravelly voice snapped back angrily, and there was a moment when it sounded vaguely familiar to Adler. “It is immoral. It is degrading. It is a violation of everything that is human and decent.”
“Why don’t you just kill me? That is what it is all about, isn’t it?” Adler said with a sudden burst of bravura and anger, straightening his shoulders and glaring into the shadows. The pain had subsided momentarily.
“We don’t kill, that is their game. We are trying to reason with you as we did with Schiff and Nathan.”
“And did you provide the rope Kefar used to hang himself?”
“Nein. His conscience tied that knot,” the gravelly voice answered. Adler sat for a moment, staring away from the spotlight, trying to pick our forms in the shadows. The gravelly voice sounded more familiar.
“Listen to me, Herman,” the first man said in a sympathetic voice. “Stop now and I promise no one will ever know what you have done. We understand the pressures. But if you continue, there is no way you will ever wash the blood off your hands. Your people will shun you and the Nazis will break you like a twig.”
“Stop it!” the little man cried. The excitement of the meeting with Vierhaus coupled with his fear at the hands of his kidnappers began to take its toll on Adler. He was breathing hard. Sweat stained his shirt collar and bathed his face, which had turned the color of wet clay. He squeezed his chest with one hand and his lips pulled back from his teeth in a grimace.
“1 need my pills,” he said, frantically searching his pockets. “Please, where are my pills?”
“There were no pills in your pockets, Herr Adler. I searched you thoroughly.”
“Of course there are pills,” he gasped. “I go nowhere without my pills.”
He stood up, lost his footing and one of his captors jumped from the darkness and grabbed him.
Adler clutched at the man’s shirt. “My pills,” he croaked. “Help me please.” And then his eyes bulged as he looked up at the man. He was short and broad-shouldered, a young man in his twenties with a heavy black beard and long hair. It took a moment for Adler to recognize his nephew.
“My God, Joachim, what are you doing?” he cried. “I am your Uncle Herman!”
The young man steered him back to the bed.
“Where are the pills, Uncle?” he asked in a calm voice.
“V-v-vest pocket . . .“ His voice had diminished into a terrified whine. His hands trembled uncontrollably as he fumbled through the pockets. “Here, they are here.” But there were no pills and the realization added to the stress and anxiety Herman Adler was already experiencing. His heart was racing out of control, sending lightning streaks of pain into his chest and stomach. He started gasping for breath.
“Oh my God,” he croaked. He clutched his chest with both hands and bent over so his head was almost touching his knees.. “Help me. Help me.”
The other two captors had joined Weber. They loosened Adler’s tie and unbuttoned his collar.
“Take it easy,” the taller one, the silhouetted man, Avrum Wolffson, said gently, and began rubbing his wrists. “Try to relax. Your pills must have fallen out of your pocket. Take slow, deep breaths, don’t make it worse. We will try to get you a doctor. Get him some water, Werner.”
Adler looked up, his breath coming in short rushes. “Why?” he asked pitifully and collapsed on the bed. By the time Werner Gebhart came back with the water, Herman Adler was dead.
John Hammond was one of Keegan’s oldest friends. He was the scion of the Hammond Organ family, a jazz aficionado who wrote a column for the jazz music magazine Metronome and prided himself on discovering new talent. Hammond would go anywhere, to the smallest town and the dingiest club, to hear any jazz musician with promise. Among others, the young entrepreneur had discovered Billie Holiday and Benny Goodman, the clarinetist engaged to Hammond’s sister, who was gaining fame in the States with his swing orchestra. He had set up Holiday’s first recording date with Goodman, lured Count Basie from Chicago to New York, discovered the frenetic drummer Gene Krupa, had been the first to write about drummer Chick Webb and his big band, and he had discovered the great piano player Teddy Wilson, putting him together with Goodman. Hammond had produced a couple of records for Columbia Records and his reputation as an impresario of new talent had become indisputable. If Hammond was impressed by Jenny’s unique long-distance phone audition, he could open many doors for her—nightclubs, bands, recordings, radio shots.
Keegan had hired Charlie Kraus, an American jazz arranger and pianist living in Paris, to work with Jenny and accompany her during the audition. That had impressed Hammond who knew Kraus to be a tough and discriminating musician, a man who would not waste his time with second-rate talent. A dapper little man who dressed in the fashion of the day with his beret cocked jauntily over one eye, Kraus, whose mother was Negro, had been an arranger for Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and other rising stars before he had abandoned the States two years earlier, disillusioned by racism in the music business.
Kraus made a good living as a teacher and arranger and had a small combo which played in one of the Paris clubs on weekends. It was there one night that Keegan had convinced him to let Jenny try a song or two. Kraus had been amazed, talking her into singing with the band for an entire set, then offering her a permanent job. But Keegan had more ambitious plans. He had tracked down Hammond in Kansas City and put Kraus on the phone.
“She’s special, Johnny,” Kraus told Hammond. “Great breath control. Phrasing’s a miracle. Tone’s unique, not quite alto but almost. And the lady has great respect for lyrics, doesn’t throw away a single syllable. I mean, this lady knows exactly what she wants a song to sound like. Man, she reaches for notes some of us don’t even hear in our head. Tell yuh, John, she could give me a lesson or two.”
Based on that endorsement, Hammond had agreed to the unprecedented phone audition. Keegan’s dream was that Hammond would be impressed enough to lure Jenny to New York.
They had gone to Kraus’s studio in Montmartre and spent an afternoon there, exchanging ideas, trying new things, working with songs she didn’t know. Then Keegan had moved the piano into their suite; she and Kraus had been working together for two weeks to prepare for the event.