A Week to Kill

By RM Zurkan

Nobody told Trudy that her favorite aunt was even sick, but when Trudy flies up to New York City to see her, she finds that Jo is dead, poisoned. Suspicion falls on Jo's sister-in-law, but Trudy doesn't believe it. This is the same woman who saved Trudy's uncle during their escape from Communist-held Hungary after WWII. Although suspiciously eager to sell the antique cabinet Jo left her, she's not the only one with a motive. Jo's lawyer may have drained her assets--how else to explain what little money is left? Trudy's uncle, badly scarred after being shot during the escape, underwent an operation that Jo's doctor friend was supposed to have performed. However, he let an intern operate and now fears the consequences to his reputation should it become known.  A neighbor held checks for people at the bank where she worked instead of returning them.  No one was supposed to know, but Jo knew and might have been tempted to tell in order to stop the neighbor's harassing her. Finally, Jo was seeing a married man who wrote letters he's desperate to get back.

• Language: English
• Publisher: RM Zurkan
• Release date: Apr 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386990765

RM Zurkan

R. M. Zurkan resides in central California with 2 dogs and a cat.

Book preview

A WEEK TO KILL

Chapter 1

Seized with pain, she bent over, clutched her stomach. This wasn’t the flu. Couldn’t be the flu. No matter what she had thought yesterday, today she knew better.

Time to face the truth. 

Someone had poisoned her.

She had an idea who it was. Each time they met, a few hours later she felt sick. Each time worse than before. Their last meeting had taken place that morning. This afternoon the pain was worse, unbearable. But why? Why her? Punishment? Karma? A woman her age had no business collecting lovers, having an affair with a married man. She wasn’t brought up that way. All those years ago, in Hungary.

So what if she felt cheated.

Or was it coincidence. Was it disease. She was no longer young. Nobody lives forever.

A worse spasm seized her. She grabbed her stomach and lurched across the room, reaching the toilet in the nick of time. After the attack, she felt a little better. She returned to the kitchen and brewed a cup of herbal tea while she thought about what to do.

At the very least, she should tell someone. In case. She wouldn’t name names because what if she was wrong?

She made up her mind to write to the policeman who had helped her when her apartment was burglarized. He was young. She liked young people. Particularly young men. He would know what to do, and, in case she was wrong, she would not name names. He would question them all. Smiling despite her pain, a smile more like a grimace, she thought, let them sweat a bit. He’ll figure it out. Or someone else will.

She rose, fell back, pushed herself up to a standing position by pressing on the arms of her chair. She stumbled over to the secretary and sat down heavily. She could have closed her eyes and slept but contented herself with resting for a few minutes. When she opened her eyes again, she looked at the clock. Twenty minutes had gone by. She pulled out paper and an envelope from one of the drawers in the secretary, picked up a pen and began to write. Halfway through, she stopped writing and smiled. Now she had a chance to inflict some damage on all those who had taken her for granted for so many years. Tearing up what she had written, she began again. When she finished writing, she stood up. She ought to be in bed but was determined to mail the letter today. After she had sent the letter safely on its way, she would phone the doctor.

She left the apartment without realizing that she had left the door open. Gripping the wall, she made her way to the elevator, took it down to the lobby and handed the envelope to Helen, the switchboard operator. Would you mail this for me?

Of course. Helen peered at her. You look awfully pale. Are you all right? Can I call someone?

Helen’s face receded. She felt cold all over, dizzy, and her stomach hurt. She doubled over, fell to the ground.

Chapter 2

I had traveled up from Texas to see her—Jo, my favorite aunt. She was in the hospital. I didn’t know why. As soon as the plane landed, I phoned from the airport for an update and learned that she was gone.

Gone. A euphemism, it wasn’t what the hospital receptionist had actually said. Why was it so hard for me to say the word? Dead—they told me she was dead. I had arrived too late, and she was dead. She was dead, and I still didn’t know why, what was wrong with her. I almost hadn’t found out that she was in the hospital.

It was my own fault. Why hadn’t I kept in touch? The familiar excuses flooded my mind. I was so busy. The others, her brother and his wife, should have let me know me she had fallen sick. The fact remained that I should have phoned her more often. I should have flown up to see her. I shouldn’t have waited till it was too late.

Frozen, I stood in the phone booth while around me in the crowded baggage area of New York’s LaGuardia Airport passengers milled, waiting at carousels, hauling luggage toward ground transportation, talking on cell phones, anxiously searching the crowd outside for a familiar face. I reviewed my options—I had a place to stay in New York City, but why stay? I thought about just getting on another plane and returning to my home in Texas. There was no one else here I wanted to see. Jo was my last connection in New York. 

First my mother, four years ago, and now her sister, my beloved aunt.

I owed her so much. She taught me about art and antiques. I might even say she taught me how to live.

I was a slow learner. 

Unlike her brother and his wife and even, to some extent, my mother, Jo had assimilated as well. She had become Americanized while the rest of them remained what they had been on arriving—refugees. In some ways they still were refugees.

I couldn’t make Jo understand why I left New York. We quarreled about my decision to take a job in Texas. Everybody comes to New York, she said. Why are you leaving?

Did I think I could move away and everything here would remain the same?  Heraclitus was right; you don’t step in the same river twice. I should have known better.  How many times had life already moved on without me? 

Now, finally having got here, I’d found that death had gotten here first. I stood in the phone booth while people milled around and asked myself questions I didn’t know the answer to.

A woman in a fur coat and hat, too warm for New York in September, stopped a few feet away from the phone booth, rummaged in her purse for coins. Perhaps, like me, she had a cell phone but had forgotten to charge it. I stumbled out of the phone booth and walked toward the exit.

I had called the switchboard from home, and Helen had informed me that Jo was in the hospital. The old Greenwich Village building still had a switchboard and an operator, Helen. She knew all there was to know about the goings-on in the building, but she didn’t know what was wrong with Jo. My aunt had collapsed in front of her, and Helen had called an ambulance. That was as much as she knew. After Helen told me, I phoned the others, Jo’s brother, my uncle Carl, and his wife, Magda and demanded to know the details. I did not ask them why they had not phoned me. I knew why—I wasn’t one of them. Magda did not seem to like the fact that I knew Jo was in the hospital and, when I said that Helen told me, she got mad at Helen and said Helen should mind her own business. She tried to tell me that Jo was not seriously ill, but I didn’t believe her. Magda preferred keeping things to herself. As it turned out, I was right.

In the end, I flew up to New York to see for myself what was going on. I didn’t trust Magda, didn’t even completely trust my uncle. Due to his wartime injuries, he was too dependent on her. I wasn’t close to them. Jo was the only one I had been close to.  Magda hinted of secrets, a past I didn’t know about. When I had asked Jo what she meant, Jo had made up some excuse to put me off.

There seemed to be no point in going to the hospital, but I decided I wanted to take a last look at her, commune with her for the last time. Foolishly, knowing the subway would be faster not to mention cheaper, I took a cab all the way from La Guardia uptown to New York Hospital, gawking out the window as if I’d never seen New York City before even though I’d been gone only a couple of years. The taxi dropped me at the hospital, and the driver opened the trunk and stood my overnight bag on the sidewalk. I paid him, picked up the suitcase and entered the hospital through the swinging door. An horseshoe-shaped information desk curved before me. I dropped the suitcase on the floor in front of the counter. Patient name?  She typed Jo’s name into the computer and, when the screen came back, looked at me uncertainly. I know, I said. I was hoping to see her. Is she still in the room?

I don’t know, she admitted. You can go up. The nurses will know where she is, if she’s still there. She gave me the room number.

Magda and Carl stood outside Jo’s door. They looked surprised to see me.

Trudy, what are you doing here?  We didn’t expect you. Magda was dressed, as usual, in black, but now she had a reason to mourn.

I felt sick and angry. Why didn’t you tell me she was so sick? I only found out by accident. I’m family too, you know.

It happened so fast, Magda explained. Carl, who rarely talked, said nothing.

When were you going to let me know? Would you at least have told me when the funeral was? I was not close to Magda the way I was to Jo and regretted it. As I grow older I’m starting to wish I were closer to the few relatives I have left. I wondered why, since there were so few of us, we didn’t keep better track of each other. Even though we didn’t always see eye to eye. Jo disapproved of my moving away.

One of the reasons I had splurged on taxi fare all the way in from La Guardia to Manhattan was that I didn’t have to pay for a hotel in New York. In an uncharacteristic burst of sociability, I’d telephoned a photographer I’d gone out with a few times and told him I was coming to New York. Our relationship hadn’t meshed, but we’d remained friendly. I hoped we could meet for a drink some time during the week, but, as it happened, he was about to leave town. Before I could express my disappointment, he asked, how’d you like to stay at my place? Keep an eye out, get the mail.  I’d feel safer if the condo wasn’t empty. New York being what it is.

Is your neighborhood safe? I’d asked, knowing that the lower east side, while undergoing gentrification, was still iffy.

Pretty much, he said, a tepid assurance at best. Mostly. I’d just prefer it if someone were here. You could answer the phone too if you wouldn’t mind. Last time I was away, my answering machine filled up, and I lost some important calls. I wouldn’t have to tell the PO to hold my mail either.

How long are you planning to be away?

At least a week. Maybe more. Probably more. I can’t be sure right at the moment. Let me ask you this, any chance you plan to return for good?

I didn’t know what to say, hedged. I wasn’t exactly happy where I was, but I liked my job. Plus, I suspected I was the kind of person who wasn’t happy anywhere. Some people just aren’t at home in their own skin. I’d returned to New York not only to see Jo but to see if the city still held any attraction for me. I had loved New York City, loved it and hated it, the way people do who have lived there. I hadn’t been back up north in over a year but still wasn’t sure I could feel comfortable anywhere else. Certainly, Texas, where I lived now, wasn’t the answer.

I had been going to tell Jo that my house in Texas was up for sale. She would have assumed that I’d be moving back to New York, and she would have been happy that I’d finally seen the light. Before leaving, rather than using a lockbox I turned over the key to Mrs. Garibaldi, my neighbor, so she could admit the real estate agents and their clients, if there ever were any. I’d been trying to sell the house for nearly a year without success.  No one had even made an offer, and I was beginning to have second thoughts about selling, reading something like a sign in the lack of buyers. I was trying hard to make myself like the place enough to stay on there. Plenty of people who moved to Texas when I did loved it, but right from the beginning I had never been one of them. The metroplex, as they referred to the area between Dallas and Forth Worth, was too flat, too hot and nearly as humid as New York City though far from the ocean. The Army Corps of Engineers in their wisdom had carved out several lakes, mudholes full of skeletal tree corpses and water moccasins. The vapor from these bodies of water created seaside humidity without the sea. I didn’t drink iced tea, sweet or unsweet, or iced anything for that matter, didn’t like doughnuts, and, while I enjoyed TexMex, I missed the ethnic foods I had taken for granted in New York City. My attitude hadn’t improved as time passed. Still, I went on trying. Being in New York was going to make it harder to return to Texas. No other place throbs like New York does, certainly not the metroplex. Despite efforts to enliven downtown Dallas, on the weekend the place was as quiet as a morgue. Now that I was back in New York, I was beginning to realize just how big a mistake I’d made. I missed the city and missed Jo. I hadn’t known how much she meant to me till now, when it was too late.

Jo had been a warm presence in my life ever since I could remember. I had admired her too. When you meet an old gal—Jo turned 75 on her last birthday—who still knows how to have fun, still gets it on with the men—you hope she’ll live forever and keep showing you how to suck the sweetness out of life. Men and women were drawn to her. I could not put my finger on any one reason for her attraction, eventually decided that it was her personality. She didn’t look back. She didn’t live in the past. She chose to be happy. More than her curvaceous figure, which she was able to keep without undue strain, it was her smile that drew people to her. She smiled a lot. It was as simple as that.

At 75, she’d lived an eventful life. After John died, she had a series of affairs, none of them serious. In the ambulance which rushed them to the hospital after his fatal heart attack he had made her promise never to change her name, and in truth, I don’t think she ever considered it.

Under Jo’s tutelage I’d learned to appreciate fine china and crystal, how to tell Spode from supermarket ware. From Jo I’d learned to appreciate embroidery and tapestry. Every piece of linen Jo owned was embroidered, even towels. Handmade lace and other embellishments were making a comeback although I didn’t know anyone now who had the time to sit and embroider initials or crochet edging the way Jo did. I had seldom seen her without a piece of linen or needlepoint canvas in her lap. When she visited, she brought a crochet hook and a ball of cotton along with her, and when she left she gave the completed lace to her host. She taught me how to crochet and needlepoint, and now, like her, I seldom go anywhere without something to work on. Even now I carried a crochet hook and yarn in my suitcase.

I had dreaded seeing them—Jo’s bother and his wife, my cousin and her husband, Paul, who lived in Montreal. Where’s Eva? I asked Magda.

She’s coming, she said.

My uncle was crying silently. I had nothing against Uncle Carl except his slavish devotion to his wife, but I understood it. After all, she saved his life when they escaped from Hungary. The injury which had nearly killed him had destroyed his looks and possibly his spirit as well. Magda, his wife, was something else again. Jo didn’t like her much either but pretended to, for Carl’s sake.

You came straight from the airport? Magda stated, eyeing my suitcase. 

I called the hospital. I was hoping to see her one last time.  She nodded. You think I could have a few minutes alone with her? I nodded at the closed door behind them.

The elevator opened again, and, to my surprise, out walked Jo’s lawyer. Seeing him raised my hackles. Supposedly, he was a family friend, but I wondered. He’d been Jo’s husband’s lawyer and continued to manage her estate after he died. From the way she spoke lately, I knew Jo didn’t leave much. How much he’d managed her out of I didn’t know, but I suspected the worst. Magda and Carl stood on either side of him. Only my cousin, Eva, and her husband, Paul, were missing. I wondered what had held them up. They never missed a death. 

I’m not sure I’d have made the trip to New York if I’d known Jo was already dead. Not because I lived three thousand miles away, nothing like that, just, I don’t believe that the dead know or care about what people do for them after death. Jo and I had discussed death, her death. When you’re in your seventies, you think about it more than when you’re in your thirties. Jo wanted to have all the fun she could have in this life.  She didn’t believe in life after death. I hoped she was wrong.

I greeted him, calling him Mr. Bass although I had known him since childhood.  He looked surprised.  Trudy, what are you doing here?

I came to see Jo.

He sighed. I’m afraid you’re too late.

I nodded.

Magda said, No reason for you to stay. You may as well turn around and go home.

She talked as if I lived down the street. I mumbled something about staying on for the funeral. My relatives always had this effect on me, making me feel larger than usual, clumsy and inarticulate. I stood nearly a foot taller than any of the women, and I was fair, like the father I’d never known. Carl grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard, his blue eyes clear and sharp above his torn visage. He spoke with his eyes. He had been shot in the face, which had been blown half away. Magda had saved him by carting him off in a wheelbarrow. Jo had brought them to the states and arranged for plastic surgery for Carl. He still walked around with a loose bandage, like a doctor’s mask, over the bottom half of his face. May I go in now? I asked the nurse, who told me to go ahead.

My heart hammered as I opened the door with a sweaty hand and stepped inside.  Two beds, but only one was occupied.  Jo’s body looked shrunken. It hardly took up any room at all. A sheet covered her head. I picked it up, folded it back. Jo’s eyes were nearly closed, slits of light beneath heavy lids. In the last few days her hair had turned completely white. Only her eyebrows remained black, curved inverted vees over her eyelids.  Ah, Jo, I murmured, Jo.  Eyes streaming, I stumbled out of the room.

Magda stood in front of the nurses’ station speaking to the nurses, who were nodding sympathetically. I saw her turn to Bass, heard her say, we can use the waiting room at the end of the hall. It’s empty. She turned to me, touched my arm.  You don’t have to stay.

Despite my grief, I wondered what she meant. Bass explained. Magda wants me to read the will. If you have a plane to catch, you may as well leave now.

Why so eager to get rid of me?  I dug in my heels, took a deep breath, unsure whether to trust my voice. I just got here. I’m taking a week off. I had hoped to spend it with Jo, but now I’ll stay on and wait for the funeral.

New York is so expensive, Magda probed.

I have the use of a friend’s apartment.

A pragmatist, Bass said, Let her stay. This won’t take long.  Jo’s estate was not...substantial.

Then why the fuss, I silently wondered, why the unseemly haste. Did I imagine it, or did Magda stiffen when Bass referred to Jo’s estate not being substantial. Her round face under the tight chignon attempted to appear as open as a child’s. Only the hooded eyes betrayed the intensity of her interest. She wore no makeup on her heavy lids, but her eyes, more black than brown, were prominent enough without makeup. Brown half circles arced beneath them. As usual, she wore vermilion lipstick, which stood out against her pale ivory skin.  She wore black, but she always did. Jo never wore black. She used to say that life was black enough.

Bass led us to an empty waiting room at the end of the hall, and we took chairs around a table in one corner. Bass set his briefcase on the table and pulled out a folder. He returned the briefcase to the floor and opened the folder. Briefly, she left cash in the amount of $60,000 to the Hope Foundation. Bass paused and looked up, waiting for objections. I remembered learning that he was the Foundation’s trustee, or one of them. It didn’t seem legal for him to be executor and indirect beneficiary. She left her furniture to you, Magda, except for the bedroom set, which she left to Trudy.

Magda sighed. I realized I was holding my breath and let it out. I couldn’t decide how I felt. Jo’s antiques were worth a lot more than my furniture, but I already owned a bedroom set. If I did sell the house in Texas, I’d move into a smaller place or leave the area entirely, and I’d want to sell the furniture I already had. You can’t sell anything for close to its worth in the Metroplex. Besides, I intended making it a practice from here on out not to own too much, one or two things I cared about and the rest strictly on the basis of need.

While I mulled over my options, Magda spoke up. When can I have my furniture? She couldn’t wait, I could see it in her eyes. People were usually less acquisitive as they aged, but apparently this did not hold true in her case. Maybe she had found a way to take it with her.

Any time you want, Bass informed her. Right now if you want.

At that moment, a stranger entered the room, gave us each the onceover, then, correctly assuming that Bass was in charge, addressed him. I’m Lt. Jackowitz. Are you the decedent’s relatives? I’m here to tell you that before the body is released, we will have to do an autopsy.

Autopsy? Bass squeaked. That’s highly unusual, isn’t it?

We received a note from the dead woman just a few days ago, saying she thought someone was trying to poison her. Now she turns up dead. Makes us suspicious, you know?

Chapter 3

We gaped at him. He remained unshaken, unperturbed. He’d dropped the bombshell, but it was our problem, not his.  Bass recovered first.  Murder!  But that’s impossible.

Why impossible?  the policeman asked, his voice deceptively quiet, his tone cool. Unlikely, perhaps, improbable, but anything is possible. He spoke softly, slurring the words, his speech unlike the average New Yorker’s staccato. With a name like Jackowitz, he shouldn’t be Hispanic, but he had the look and the accent. Black curly hair, olive skin, squarish face, strong features accented by a dimple in his chin, I wondered about his background. If Hispanic, he probably hailed from Puerto Rico, the tiny island with a lower native population than the number of Puerto Ricans in New York City. I used to wonder why, after the first few Puerto Ricans immigrated and told the rest how it was, the others kept coming. Poor in Puerto Rico and poor in New York City, where you were buffeted by frigid winds from the Hudson and East Rivers and invaded by roaches and rats in the humid heat of summers, were different as night and day. Puerto Rico was a tropical paradise. 

Jackowitz’s lightweight gray suit was wrinkled, and he looked tired. I wished, whatever we had to do, we’d get it over with so all of us could go about our lives, our sad current affairs.

You don’t understand, Magda claimed. "Everyone