Shadow of the Bomb

Chapter 8

Over the next two days, the dailies gave the “Hyde Park Murder” varying degrees of coverage, ranging from the Times, with its PROFESSOR GARROTED! screamer, to the resolutely sedate Daily News, which ran the Bergman story at the bottom of Page 1 with a headline reading “Police Seek Suspects in University Slaying.”

“Exciting stuff, Antsy,” Packy Farmer sneered, flipping a copy of the Daily News onto the floor next to his desk. “Your editors really know how to make murder sound dull. Or, wait... maybe, just maybe, it’s your writing that puts your paper’s headline writers to sleep. Could that possibly be?”

Masters cleared his throat. “I can only work with what I am given by our noble comrade here from the Tribune,” he said, swiveling to face me, palms upturned in a gesture of helplessness.

“Aha,” Dirk O’Farrell chimed in. “So our Mr. Masters, who is content — as I fear we all are — to let Brother Malek cover the Detective Bureau for us, now complains that he’s not gleaning good material from said Malek. And yet, Mr. Metz here seems to get the story top play in his publication.”

“Yes, but his publication is not the Chicago Daily News,” Masters countered with irritation. He stressed the last three words as if they were worthy of worship.

“Well now, ain’t that just the cat’s pajamas,” Eddie Metz said in a rare burst of self-expression. “Anson, here is one great story, any way you slice it. A prof, or an associate prof — what the hell difference does it really make? — is killed in his apartment right in the middle of a goddamn university community full of wiseheads who have forgotten more than any of us will ever know. An ivy-walled campus is hardly the place you’d expect this sort of thing, right? Of course we’re going to give it top-of-the-page play, for God’s sake. Seems to me we’re in this business to, one, report the news, and two, sell newspapers.”

O’Farrell clapped four times, spacing them for effect. “Nicely done, Eddie, nicely done indeed. Didn’t know you had it in you. Take that, Anson.”

I stayed out of this little go-round, mainly because the Trib was in the same boat as the Daily News, underplaying the murder with placement off of Page 1 and bland headlines such as “Search Continues for Campus Killer.” My editors’ lack of interest in the case, however, was no reason for me to slack off. The Bergman funeral was to be held Saturday at a church just off the university campus, and I figured it might be worth my while to slip in and play the anonymous observer.

The stone church on 57th Street looked solidly traditional to me as I approached it from the east. Being a lapsed Catholic and a nonchurchgoer myself, I have had very few occasions to enter a house of worship, particularly one that is not associated with the Vatican.

The service was scheduled to start in five minutes when I went into the sanctuary at 10:55 and took a seat at the back. Less than two dozen people, almost all of them men, were scattered among the folding chairs in the vaulted Gothic sanctuary, which looked like the interiors of European churches that I had seen in photographs. As viewed from behind, most of the mourners seemed to be in their thirties and forties. There was no casket at the front.

I thought some other reporters might have shown up, but apparently the papers, or at least their editors, had little interest in the murder anymore. We sat in silence — no music — until a tall, gaunt figure strode to the lectern from a door at the front. He wore a baggy black suit, a thin, dark tie, and a somber expression on a long, narrow face with prominent cheekbones. His sparse, reddish hair was combed across his scalp in a futile attempt to forestall the baldness that lurked no more than a half decade away. He peered out at the gathering over horned-rimmed glasses perched on the end of his nose, nodded, and cleared his throat.

“Good morning,” he intoned, expressionless, as his bony fingers gripped the lectern. There was no response.

Another throat-clearing. “We are here this day to pay tribute to the life of Arthur Bergman. A fine gentleman and a fine teacher.” More throat noises and a pause.

“I wish that I had known Mr. Bergman,” continued the speaker, who never chose to identify himself. “I know, from what I have heard from some of you here” — he dipped his head toward his small audience — “that I would have found him fascinating company, as I know that so many of you did. And I also know you will continue to remember him and his gifted and creative mind.

“In addition to his scientific brilliance, several of you have told me of his unwavering loyalty to this school.” He spread his arms wide, turning to his left and then to his right, as if to encompass the entire university. “Not that he agreed with everything that was done here.” A slight smile and what passed for a chuckle.

“From what I have been told, he never forgave the school’s administration for dropping the football program. He was an avid fan of the team, his team, his Maroons. And at every home game, he could be found cheering from a seat near the fifty-yard line at Stagg Field, a stadium now overrun with weeds.”

The speaker — was he a minister? — went on for a few more minutes, talking in platitudes about Bergman as if filling time, which probably was the case. He closed with a rambling prayer about the eternal nature of life and death, and invited everyone to stay for a reception in the social hall downstairs.

We all filed down a stone stairway into a cheerless and dimly lit basement room where two smiling, matronly ladies stood behind a long table with coffee, tea, cakes, cookies, and sandwiches arrayed on it. Hardly like the spirited wakes I had attended, where the drink-mixer was the most popular figure.

I stood at the rear of the room, surveying the gathering. There were only two women, one a striking, willowy blonde who would turn heads in any setting and who, I later learned, had been Bergman’s second wife. The other, a generation older, turned out to be an aunt from Minneapolis. The balance of the assemblage of less than twenty were men, most of whom looked to be contemporaries of the deceased. They were a varied lot, several in herringbone sport coats that apparently were a popular uniform on the campus, and a few of them sporting beards.

After everyone else was served, I stepped to the table and got coffee and a plate of cookies. As I was biting into the first one, a short gent with a bushy brown mustache flecked with gray and a black turtleneck sweater introduced himself.

“Hello, I’m Nate Lazar, I worked with Arthur in the department,” he said, holding out a hand, which I dutifully shook. He cocked his head, studying me. “Don’t believe I’ve met you before. Are you a relative of his?”

“No... no, I didn’t really know him all that well, but we had drinks together in the University Tavern a few times,” I said, exaggerating the number of occasions I had met him. “We had some interesting conversations.”

“Ah, yes, Arthur liked to drop in at the U.T. with some frequency. So... you’re not associated with the university?”

“No, I’m... ” I paused, wondering what tack to take, then decided to hell with it, why pussyfoot around? “... I’m a newspaper reporter with the Tribune. Name’s Malek. Steve Malek.”

“Really?” He turned and carefully set his coffee cup on the table. “Are you covering Arthur’s... death?”

“Not officially. I came down here originally because we at the paper had heard rumors of unrest in Hyde Park. I stopped by the U.T. to look around and get a feel for the neighborhood, and that’s where I met Mr. Bergman. Just happened to sit next to him at the bar.”

Lazar raised his eyebrows. “What kind of unrest would that be?”

“It was sort of vague,” I told him. “We never got any specifics.”

He nodded absently. “I should introduce you to some of Arthur’s other colleagues in the Physics Department, if you don’t mind.”

I said I didn’t, and he led me over to three men who stood in a circle talking at the far end of the room.

“Mr. ... Malek, isn’t it? I’d like you to meet these gentlemen. This is Theodore Ward, Edward Rickman, and Miles Overby.”

I shook hands with each as Lazar told them I was a Tribune reporter. Their faces registered varying degrees of surprise, interest, and reservation. Overby, rawboned with dark hair parted in the center and wearing rimless glasses, spoke first. “So, I take it you are here because of the... er, the nature of Arthur’s death?” His tone was disapproving.

“Not entirely. As I was telling Mr. Lazar a minute ago, I had met Mr. Bergman a couple of times at the University Tavern. We happened to sit next to each other at the bar and got to talking, the way people often do in saloons.”

“Mr. Malek had come down here because he had gotten word of ‘unrest’ in Hyde Park,” Lazar put in.

“Unrest, eh? Of what sort?” It was Theodore Ward, bald, double-chinned, and stocky, the vest of his tweedy suit straining to contain his stomach.

I shrugged. “As I was also telling Mr. Lazar, we never got specifics. I thought I’d take a look around, and that’s when I met Mr. Bergman in the saloon.”

“What did you talk about?” asked Rickman, who could have been a model for a men’s-store newspaper ad. He had sandy hair and a square jaw and was the best-dressed man in the room, his double-breasted blue blazer worn with a blue-and-white striped shirt and a silver silk tie.

“We didn’t even talk at first,” I told him. “He was in a conversation with the man on the other side of him. The subject was the war. The other guy was pretty glum about how things have been going, but Bergman seemed absolutely convinced that we would win. No doubt whatsoever. Everybody these days should be as confident as he was. It impressed me.”

They all leaned in as I talked, eyes fastened on me and apparently waiting for the next words out of my mouth. I felt it was time for a change of venue.

“How about our continuing this gathering with something stronger than church coffee?” I proposed, looking down at my cup. “Let’s reconvene at the U. T. My watch says it’s just past noon, so we can’t be accused of being morning drinkers. And I’m buying.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Nate Lazar, but the others appeared dubious, probably not anxious to be the guests, even for a drink, of someone who toiled in the lowly ranks of journalism.

“Oh, come on, boys,” Lazar joshed. “Let’s at least hoist a glass with Mr. Malek. We certainly don’t want him to think we’re unfriendly down here, now, do we?”

Lazar was so amiable that he broke whatever tension had been building, and after the four said their goodbyes and gave their condolences to others in the room, we lumbered up the dark stairway, destination, University Tavern.