Manhattan 62 by Reggie Nadelson Page A

a smoke, I went home, sat at the kitchen table, typed out everything Mrs Alicia Reyes had told me that morning and tried to make some sense of it, then I dug out the file I had kept on the High Line case—on the girl who was murdered, who turned out to be Susana Reyes. But what caught my eye was a copy of the Village Voice with Ostalsky’s profile.
    August 6: it had been August 6 when I first saw the piece about Max Ostalsky in the Village Voice. I remembered because it was around the time Marilyn Monroe died. She passed on August 5, and reports of her death appeared in the papers the next day.
    How much I loved Marilyn. I’m staring at her picture in the New York Post at the office when I knock the ashtray off my desk and it spills butts all over my fresh chinos. “Goddamn it to hell.”
    â€œWhat’s with you, Pat?” says the guy sitting at the next desk, a new young detective typing with two fingers, filling out a form.
    â€œNothing. Leave me be. Do your own damn work.”
    I’m feeling glum about Marilyn, and pretty much every goddamn thing when my boss calls me in, and says he saw the Village Voice and yells at me for palling around with Reds. Murphy sees a Red under every bed, and he considers himself vigilant. Plus, he is not a subtle man.
    Lieutenant R. N. Murphy is short with big shoulders and an ugly pug-dog Irish face. His cruddy sour breath stinks of black coffee and the Camels he chain-smokes.
    Once he was a star among young detectives, back when he was a favorite of Mayor LaGuardia’s. In the war, he fought in the Pacific, he was some kind of Marine hero at Tarawa, which was something, one of the ugliest battles, dead Americans all over the beach. Murphy got a Bronze Star. Makes sure everyone hears it.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œSit yourself down, Wynne,” says Murphy. “So what about this Commie pal of yours, man? In that new, what’s it called, this rag?”
    â€œThe Village Voice . And he’s not my friend.”
    â€œNo? Little birdie told me you been meeting him pretty regular for drinks and showing him a welcome to our fair city. You gotta be careful of them son-of-a-bitch Commies, man, you hear me?”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    The boss laughs his mean pinched laugh. “Gotcha. You told me what I wanted to know. What’d you think, man, that I got spies out watching you?”
    â€œDo you?”
    Murphy thinks I’m some kind of bohemian bum, hanging around the Village. To him, I’m a freak, thirty-two with a failed marriage to the girl I got pregnant, the kid I’m never allowed to see, a man who sometimes goes to foreign movies and likes colored music he hates. “Just a friendly warning,” he says. “On the other hand, maybe you’ll learn something from that Russki. You never know. You find out anything, you come to me, right? Wynne? The FBI would love to hear. Read the piece,” says Murphy, leans back in his chair, puts his feet on his desk, and lights up. He wears ugly shit-kickers, big thick black old lace-ups so old the soles are broken. “Just read it.”
    â€œI read it.”
    â€œRead it again.”
    â€œ SOVIET GRAD STUDENT DELIGHTS IN GREENWICH VILLAGE ” is the headline in the Village Voice. The photograph shows Max Ostalsky, smiling, in a new button-down shirt in front of the Washington Square Arch. In the interview, he says how much he’s enjoying his experience in New York, especially Greenwich Village, that everyone is so kind and helpful and his studies interesting, and his particular favorite food is fried clams at Howard Johnsons.
    Max even tells a few jokes on himself, he relates how much the hospitality of New Yorkers means to him, and how much their friendship delights him, including the stranger who helped him out, buying a hot dog in the park, a friend he learns is a New York detective name of Pat Wynne. There it is, black and white, me and the Russki. A