Matson's Case Files - Boxed Set: Books 2 - 4: Matson Case Files

By Pablo Zaragoza

In the Matson's Case series, New York City's Police Chief, Robert Matson, reflects on some of his earlier cases from the 1950s. As a as a newly discharged Korean War veteran, he returns home to Harlem to find a color line blocking his admission to the police academy. Matson faces discrimination on a day-to-day basis, both professionally and personally; yet with his intelligence, skills, and hard work, he proves his worth that eventually sees him move up in the ranks.

 

MATSON'S CASE NO. 2

 

Matson's forensic boss, O'Neal, a crusty Scotsman, sends Matson to the crime scene in Manhattan, where he learns that three men, all with the same name, are murder victims, suspiciously in a three-block radius of each other.  He hooks up with his former partner, Harvey Smith, and the two cops plug into the world of spies, Nazis, and Operation Paperclip.

 

In their investigation into the three murders, all revealing ties with Hitler, the two cops go to the FDA's animal research facility, site of the three murdered men's work on biological warfare off Lyme, Connecticut, namesake for Lyme disease.

 

Who murdered whom becomes a twisted riddle of love and covert operations—and protection of government secrets. Will the truth ever be known? Matson and Smith, in their search for the answer, venture off to the FDA's Animal research facility, site of the three Nazi scientists' work on bacteriological warfare off Lyme, Connecticut.

 

MATSON'S CASE NO. 3

 

New York Detectives Matson and Smith, assigned the Chinatown beat, soon find themselves in the midst of mutilations and murders, the nefarious deeds of Ti Chu Cum, leader of a Chinese Mafia-like organization bent on carving out control of NYC Chinatown.

 

With Inspector Han from Hong Kong, whose family had been murdered by the same man, the partners face increasing threats, forcing them to relocate their families out of state. The search for the ever-elusive Ti Chu Cum, the green-eyed black Chinese monster, takes the threesome on a wild roller coaster ride. A gripping story with surprise conclusions.

 

MATSON'S CASE NO. 4

 

NYC Detectives Matson and Smith receive the case of Mattie James, once a high-end prostitute, retired and peddling on a street corner, murdered and dumped in an alley. Matson's wife Sissy, whom he had rescued from the street life, says Mattie's shabby, unkempt appearance doesn't sound like the Mattie she knew who enjoyed living in luxury.

 

While the detective duo investigates Mattie's murder, New York City experiences the chaos of the Civil Rights Movement, the murder of Malcolm X, and reverberations of Martin Luther King Jr's assassination in Memphis, TN. With riots on street corners an everyday occurrence, one ray of hope for Matson comes from Searle, a white college student who arrives in the Big Apple in a show of solidarity with suppressed black folks.

 

In the midst of keeping peace and rendering justice, Matson refuses to relegate Mattie's murder to the cold case bin. His keen interest in solving her murder leads him on a wild goose chase that involves finding her source of White China, pure heroin that he found in her peddler's satchel, plus sorting out her high-priced clients suffering from syphilis, and coordinating with the CIA's drug trafficking arm operating in Southeast Asia.

 

When Smith queries why the endless dogged pursuit ten years in the making, Matson tells him that everyone – queen or prostitute – deserves the same treatment by the men in blue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pablo Zaragoza
• Release date: Nov 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223583332

Book preview

MATSON’S CASE FILES

BOXED SET: BOOKS 2-4

Pablo Zaragoza

Table of Contents

MATSON’S CASE FILES BOXED SET: BOOKS 2-4

MATSON’S CASE NO. 2

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

EPILOGUE

MATSON’S CASE NO. 3

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

EPILOGUE

MATSON’S CASE NO. 4

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY PABLO ZARAGOZA

COPYRIGHT

MATSON’S CASE NO. 2

Nazis Walk Among Us In 1950's New York City

Pablo Zaragoza

Susan Giffin, Co-Author

To my family—my children, father, mother, brother, uncles, and

cousins—whose stories inspire me to write

Pablo Omar Zaragoza

To my parents, my brother, sister, cousins, niece, and extended

family for their support and encouragement

Susan Giffin

PROLOGUE

I have started to look back more in my old age, here in this larger office the city gives me. What I do now is administrate, making sure that policies are followed, paperwork gets done, and the politics of the city do not taint the politics of policing. It wasn’t always that way. In the old days, the mayor could quash a case because it would offend someone. Impellitteri, Wagner, Lindsay, and Beame all contributed their two cents on the occasional case for which the impact hit too close to home, too close to the nasty truth that the city had become a cesspool.

I was not particularly cheerful this morning. Sissy had not made coffee before I left, so I got my first cup out of the machine in the lobby. I hated it when she would rush to make her early morning class. She has a PhD with tenure, heads the Department of Psychology at NYU, and still teaches freshmen. I asked her why, and she told me that it keeps her fresh and alive. She said it was the same as when I took on the occasional case; I didn’t have to, but I did it to keep my hands in the work.

Today was not just any day, however. Today, we had to say goodbye to an old friend. He had built a state-of-the-art crime lab, cobbling fingerprint, fiber, and chemical analysis under one roof. He had created one of the first DNA analysis laboratories for solving crimes in the country. I had worked for him during my early days out of the academy, when he requested that I join him after our work together on the crucifixion murders. Harry O’Neal didn’t want them to put me in the police transit squad where they put blacks, so they could forget about them. O’Neal had other plans for me.

I remember him saying, Laddie, you’re not one of those mindless robots who walk the streets, knocking heads. You’ve got a brain. Since you have a brain, I want you to use it. Remember the evidence talks to us. The men and women who collect it, examine it, and infer from it are the ones that truly solve crimes.

He was right about that. The evidence talks to us if we are willing to listen. Under his tutelage, I learned how to read fibers, how to look at a room and notice that there was something out of place. He showed me the art of collecting evidence, but most importantly, he didn’t put up a roadblock when he saw the color of my skin.

I asked him once why he disregarded my skin color, and he said, We’re all pink on the inside, me boyo. I thought Gonzales had taught you that by now.

Gonzales, that’s another name from the past that haunts me on days like today. He wasn’t around long because by the end of my time at the police academy, he’d put in his paperwork to retire. He made sure that the incoming chief, Dr. Milton Helpern, knew that I wasn’t just the black man that cleaned the floors.

I remember the first time I met Helpern. He walked in, wearing a well-pressed white lab coat, with Gonzales. I had just opened a skull and was gently extracting the brain. Gonzales pointed to a bulge of tissue and asked, Matson, what is that?

You mean the Gasserian ganglion, the sensory part of the trigeminal nerve? I described the motor and sensory portions of the nerve and the motor division of the trigeminal. I gave details of the motor branches and what they inervated.

By the end of it, Helpern walked away, saying to Gonzales, Why wasn’t he born white? If he was a different color, I’d make sure Columbia Medical would take him.

Gonzales retorted, You should know by now, Milton, that we’re all pink and red on the inside. That man is freshly out of the police academy, and he is a vital part of this team.

Helpern was just one in a series of medical examiners I’ve dealt with: DiMalo, Baden, Gross, Hirsh, and now Smith. I miss them all because each one brought to the autopsy table the sense that they spoke for the dead.

I feel like the last man standing, although Smith is still alive and living in Florida. He called to say he’d be here for the funeral, but after him, there ain’t anyone else. No one to tell the ones coming up about the time when police work wasn’t sitting around waiting for the DNA to arrive. Instead, we needed all the branches of the forensic lab and a sixth sense to look inside the criminal’s mind. That legwork—knocking on doors, actually looking at fingerprints instead of letting a machine do the work for us—made it an art. It’s true that the national databank for fingerprints lets us find suspects faster and easier, but we lose so much when we don’t actually feel the card in our hand, look through the magnifying glass, and compare the ridge pattern.

The case of Richard Thompson, the victim found in his apartment, was the one that showed me how important it all was.

CHAPTER ONE

I sat in my office and pored through my case files. The old gray steel filing cabinet held every case I had ever worked. I even had notes on the case Bumpy had given me when I returned to New York. That’s another blast from the past. I remember being in the police station when he staged the sit-down strike to protest police harrassment after he got out of prison.

I was on the street by then, patrolling Harlem in ’68. I’d just taken the detective’s exam and awaited the results, when a kid grabbed me and asked me to come with him. Kids in those days, just like kids today, didn’t trust the cops, but in Harlem, they knew that I was alright. The kid wore a pair of khakis and a white t-shirt, and he ran like the wind. I almost tripped on my shoelaces, as we ran down the street. I remember thinking that if I fell, I’d bust my head on the sidewalk.

I went to Wells Restaurant. By the time I arrived, Junie Byrd Johnson was cradling her husband Bumpy in her arms. The waitress was crying, saying she’d just served him a cup of coffee, a chicken leg, and hominy grits, when he grabbed his chest, rolled over, and hit the floor.

I cleared the room, all except Junie, Finley Hoskins who’d been with Bumpy when it happened, and the waitress. The ambulance came, but Bumpy was already not breathing. They tried to revive him, but it didn’t take. They took him to Harlem Hospital where doctors pronounced him dead.

Helpern was still medical examiner (ME) at the time. He found out that I had been there on the scene, and he asked if I’d help with the autopsy. I’d stopped helping at the ME’s office, but now and then when they were short of staff, I’d come in and assist.

Helpern made his Y-shaped incision, and, pulling back the skin and subcutaneous tissue, he exposed the rib cage. He took a set of pruning shears and clipped each rib to form an inverted V and then pulled the chest plate off. He opened the pericardial sac, exposing a large heart with dilated chambers, the sign of congestive heart failure, which was secondary to cocaine and alcohol abuse during the sixty-two years of Bumpy’s life.

But the Thompson murder case in 1955 was the one I was looking for in my files, the one I wanted to review. It was the one I would use to eulogize my friend and mentor. I dug through the files. The files… one of these days I need to organize them. I didn’t like people going through my things, not even Sissy. I finally pulled the file out. The pages of the report had turned yellow, the manila stiffened.

Case Notes

February 12, 1955

With the file in hand, I remembered the giants on whose shoulders I had stood: Hans Gross, who first began to integrate different disciplines in the detection of crime; Edmond Locard, who developed the exchange principle that says we leave something of ourselves at each place we visit—a hair, a fiber, and now our DNA; Calvin Goddard, who first showed that each gun, each rifle has distinctive marks on the bullets that could help identify the weapon used in the commission of a crime; and Mathieu Orfila, the founder of toxicology, who demonstrated how certain toxins affect animals and who ushered in the physiological approach to the study of poisons. These men and others built the house known as forensic science, but in 1955, the only place we could learn about these things was by reading or by having a mentor like O’Neal. However, to every rule there is an exception; to every scientific experiment, there is an outlier, some measurement that doesn’t fit.

That was the Thompson case. My notes, as I read them, were very sterile. I sounded more like Joe Friday on Dragnet, The facts, ma’am, just the facts. But in my mind, the moments were as clear as if it were yesterday. It’s strange how your mind can take you back in time.

I went to my desk and sat down. The room began to dissolve away, and I saw instead the old apartment’s kitchen and a set of beautiful bare legs cooking at the stove.

Baby, it’s 7:00. Get up, Sissy said. She was cooking eggs in our little basement apartment. She hadn’t gotten dressed yet; she was running late for her early morning class. I came up behind her, wrapped my arms around her waist, and pressed myself against her. I felt her smooth, firm buttocks on my member which rose to attention.

She turned to face me, If you keep that up, I’ll be late to class, the bacon will burn, and you won’t get to work.

Baby, you treat me so rough. All I want to give you is a proper good morning.

Only thing you want to do is get your rocks off before going to work and make me late for class. She smiled and kissed me.

After breakfast, she got dressed and was about to go out the door, when she turned to me and said, If you keep him ready, I’ll play with him when you come home. That would stick in my mind the whole day, as I worked in O’Neal’s section.

After Sissy had left for class, I slowly put on my white shirt, tie and brown suit. O’Neal always wanted his people to look professional. I took the bus to the lab and settled in for the day’s activities.

I was working with the forensic unit, where O’Neal had taken me under his wing. I liked working the field, gathering evidence, taking pictures, and collecting fibers. He was an exceptionally good teacher, and he would always point out where I should do a little more reading.

I’d been dealing with fibers which is much different now. We didn’t have a national database to which manufacturers provided the chemical and microscopic characteristics of every fiber produced around the world. There were databases for buttons, zippers, clasps which makes matching specimens simpler. No, back then, we had to compare fibers microscopically and do melting points to determine what a fiber might be.

About 9:00, if I remember correctly, we got a call about what most likely was a natural, which is a death without the suspicion of foul play. They wanted someone to take photographs, just in case we had to open a file. I was the next one on the list for scut work.

I picked up a camera from the locker and headed to a group of apartments in Chinatown. When I arrived, Smith was already in the room, pacing up and down, waiting for me.

It’s about time, Matson.

Well, good morning to you, too.

Don’t give me a hard time. I hate this sort of shit. The guy was reclining in his chair, reading a book, when he died. Nothing here except paperwork.

I looked at the scene. It wasn’t a typical apartment in a crummy part of the city. The furniture was high-end. The dining table and chairs were Louis XIV. A few paintings on the wall, I could swear were originals. I looked close at the signatures: Rembrandt, Degas, Monet, and Cézanne. It was odd to find these in Chinatown in what appeared, at least from the outside, to be a rundown apartment building. These had to be examined by an expert, but I swear they were the real deal. I ran my finger along the frame and didn’t pick up any dust. There was a Persian rug, not a fake one like those from New Jersey that folks try to pass off as authentic. No, this one was real.

I noticed there were no pictures of family, friends or anything else to give a clue as to who this man was. No radio, just an old Victrola and a selection of classical recordings—Wagner, Vivaldi, Strauss. He had been reading an interesting book, Confessions of Felix Krull, by Thomas Mann, just before he died.

The man, Eric Thompson, was in his mid-forties, about 6’3", and muscular. He had blond hair and blue eyes. His nails were well kept. I took pictures of the corpse sitting in the chair.

I started to look around again, wondering what else I might find. Underneath the dead man’s bed, I found a leather suitcase, recently oiled to make it smooth and soft. I put gloves on to prevent transferring my fingerprints to the case.

As I pulled the case out, I saw the Totenkopf, the skull and crossbones of the German-SS. It was a symbol that this man had been willing to put himself at risk to help his community. Was he a collector of such Nazi trinkets or had he escaped and was in hiding here?

I opened the case. In it was the black uniform of an SS officer, a colonel, from what I remembered. There were multiple decorations on the chest, including the iron cross. The owner of this uniform had been in the thick of the struggle, it seemed from the beginning. I laid the uniform on the bed. At a glance, it appeared that it would fit the corpse. There were two Lugers in the case and a photograph. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like it was of the now-deceased shaking hands with Himmler. The inscription read:

Zu meinem Freund und Kameraden Henrich Mienter

Smith, who, by now, was very curious about the strange contents of the case, asked me, You know what it says?

Yeap.

Well.

To my Friend and Comrade Henrich Mienter.

So, this isn’t Eric Thompson but some Nazi?

Looks like it.

What do you think we should do?

I think we should process this as if it were a crime scene and ask the rest of the team up here. So, I made a phone call to the unit and waited for them.

As we waited, we talked about our new domestic relationships, So, tell me, Matson, you and Sissy okay?

Couldn’t be better. She cooks and I clean. She’s taking psychology classes now.

You’re not worried she’ll analyze you and find out who you really are? We laughed, and I asked about his girl.

If I get a cut, a bruise, or my back aches, she’s all over it. I couldn’t be better.

CHAPTER TWO

When O’Neal came through the door, he had some interesting news. Laddie, do you know that there are two other apparent naturals within a three-block radius?

This is the city. That’s not unusual.

Ah, it’s not, but they all be about forty, all men and all named Thompson. Now you will really make it bizarre if this fellow here is named Eric.

The man’s ID is Eric Thompson, but I found in a suitcase a photograph of a man who looks like the deceased with Himmler, signed to his good friend and comrade, Henrich Mienter.

There are no coincidences, only dots you haven’t connected. I’d like you and Smith to go to the other two addresses. I’ve cleared it with the higher-ups that we are to keep this tight. I’ve got a gut feeling, boyos, that this is going to be strange and twisted.

Smith and I hoofed it over to the second scene. Along the way, we got a hot dog since Smith hadn’t had breakfast. This was before married life had placed an extra forty pounds around his waist, and he started taking pills for diabetes and high blood pressure.

We walked up to the Heavens Arms Apartments on the edge of Chinatown. A porter stood at the door. He was a brown-skinned man with a graying mustache. He smiled and showed a sliver of gold between his front teeth. In a thick Spanish accent, he asked us our business.

New York’s best here, bud. We’re here about a death.

You mean Mr. Thompson?

You know him?

He’s been here five years, and he comes out at 6:45 every morning. A black car waits for him and he goes. He comes back at 5:15 every afternoon. On Sunday, he stays home. At Christmas time, he gives me $1,000. But if anyone asks about him, I should know nothing.

Has anyone ever asked about him? Smith asked.

No, no one asks about him, at least not during my shift. But let me see if Barney wrote anything down.

Anybody new in the building?

Yeah, the eighty-four-year-old man in 2018. He moved in two years ago.

Any service people you don’t recognize?

Who pays attention to service people? They come in and out of the building all the time. Yesterday, we had someone for the heater, a physical therapist, a grocery boy, and one for pizza delivery. All kinds of people come in and out.

You keep a record?

Yeah, we keep records, but they’re not very good because, you know, I go take a pee, I go get coffee or a sandwich from the bodega for a few minutes, and someone comes and goes.

Before we went to the crime scene, the porter had looked at his book. He came back saying that Mr. Thompson had had a visitor, someone interviewing for a job. We thanked the porter and started going upstairs. Smith wanted to take the elevator, but I opted for the stairs. I thought that if someone had gone up to the apartment, he would have used the stairs. It looked like they had been sanitized, as if someone knew that the police would investigate this death.

Smith was waiting for me at the top of the stairs. It’s curious, I said.

What?

The stairwell looks like it’s been sanitized. There isn’t a piece of paper, a discarded napkin, a speck on lint, nothing.

This address isn’t that high class to afford any kind of service.

The hallway had a nice carpet, and the wall had been freshly painted because it had that fresh-paint smell. When I pressed a finger to the wall, paint rubbed off. It had to have been painted after the victim’s death and before anyone reported it to the police. I would have to wait for Helpern to put a thermometer in the victim’s liver to get an estimated time of death and an idea when someone painted this hall.

I went to the third floor and looked at the doorknob for fingerprints, but the brass knob was polished to a shine. I opened the door and immediately got a distinct odor of ammonium and putrefaction.

Smith was already standing in front of the door to the apartment. Took you long enough, buddy.

Looking for clues, friend, looking for clues.

What did you find?

The cleanest stairwell in the city, not even a piece of paper, and it smelled like someone had cleaned up after themselves.

We entered the apartment. It wasn’t as spartan as the first one, with many glass and porcelain figures in several glass cases. The porcelain was unmistakably Lladro, the glass Murano. There were two paintings in the living room, and again I looked at the name: Miro.

The furniture, unlike the other Eric Thompson’s, was modern contemporary with a great deal of glass, metal, and leather. He was sitting in a metal chair, slumped over a glass table in a small balcony off the living room. The view wasn’t particularly great, but at least it wasn’t a pile of garbage or the wall of another building.

I went to the bedroom. The bed had silk bedsheets and pillowcases. Like the other Thompson, there were no photographs of family or friends in the whole apartment. I looked under the bed, but there was no suitcase; that would have been too spooky. He had a small closet for such a large apartment. Smith and I had the same thought and started tapping on the wall, and, sure enough, we heard the hollow sound of a false wall. I felt for some type of mechanism to open it.

Smith flipped the light switch, and the false wall slid open. I didn’t know. I just wanted to get a better view.

A tan leather suitcase similar to the one found at the first Thompson’s apartment was there. On a hook was a black leather coat and the black officer’s hat of an SS officer with Totenkopf staring at us. I took the case out of the room and put it on the bed. I unfastened the straps and opened the case with straps. Inside was a copy of Mien Kampf. I turned the pages, and on the author’s page written in German: Zu Meinem Lieben Freund, den Kampf Aufrechzuerhalten.

What does it say? asked Smith.

To my good friend, keep up the fight.

The signature was unmistakable: Adolf Hitler.

There were two framed photographs, one at Peenemünde where he was with another man identified only as WD on the photo. The other was a photo of him, Hermann Göring, and the man from the first apartment.

Smith had been looking at the doors, looking for signs of forced entry. So far, he had not found any.

There was a phone on the night table, which was a rarity in 1955. Most people used a communal phone in the hall or one at the grocer’s down the street. I made a call to the forensic lab and told Mildred, the unit secretary, to get in touch with O’Neal, that Thompson No. 2 needed to be treated as a crime scene.

I looked at the suitcase more thoroughly. On the outside, it looked bigger than it was on the inside. I felt for a latch and eventually found something hard, which triggered the release of a flap, opening a secret compartment with multiple official documents. They looked like names and locations, but I wasn’t sure what they had to do with the case. Some of the documents were in English, others in German. I would have to send them to a documents expert in order verify what they contained. The expert would give me an idea as to providence, I hoped. I placed the documents in a manila envelope, sealed the contents, dated the envelope, and signed my name, as well identifying the place and time where I had obtained it.

At this point, I felt like Alice going down the rabbit hole into Wonderland with all its mysteries and horrors. We waited for the second team to arrive before we went to the third apartment. The wind was blowing, and snow flurries started falling steadily. Good thing I wore double socks. If not, frostbite would have set in by now. People were rushing by, their heads tucked in, scarfs wrapped around their heads. I could see their breath coming from under their scarfs, and one or two had ice forming on their mustache.

It took us only a few minutes to get to the third apartment. It was very high-end. Instead of a porter in a purple coat like we met at the Heavenly Arms, there were two large gentlemen in red uniforms with brass buttons and red hats. They blocked the doorway and asked who we were. Smith and I pulled out our badges, and the doormen stepped aside. Smith grilled the two, asking the same questions he had asked the porter. They told us that no one gets into the building without registering and having the proper identification. One of the gentlemen pulled out his wallet. He flipped it open and produced a federal ID.

Sir, no one is allowed in Mr. Thompson’s apartment without authorization, the taller of the two men said.

You mean, you are impeding a criminal investigation? You are telling me that you are willing to be charged with obstruction of justice and whatever else I can think of, which may include tampering with evidence, impeding a police officer in his pursuit of his duties, and many, many more? Smith barked, getting right in the man’s face.

Sir, unless authorized, I can’t let you enter.

A buzz sounded from the man’s coat pocket, and he pulled out a walkie-talkie. I could hear the crackle and hiss of the radio transmission. The man had turned pale and kept repeating, Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

Please wait here, gentlemen, requested the man in the bellhop uniform, who obviously wasn’t a bellhop or any type of apartment doorman. I looked for the camera which had alerted whoever was inside that we meant business. Two small apertures, located a foot above either side of the doorway, would have given the person inside a perfect view.

A few minutes later, a blast from our past came to the door and ushered us through the door. The commander of our military police unit was Carl Austerbach. He was 6’2 and 245 pounds of pure muscle. His hair had grayed a little, but it was cropped down in the flat-top military style. He extended his hand to both of us. Boys, it’s good to see you. Damn good to see both of you."

We are glad to see you, sir, but we’re a little confused as to what’s going on here.

Gentlemen, I’ll tell you because I know you to be patriots. You both have worked for me, and, well, I trust you. This place houses some high-profile individuals that government doesn’t want the general public to know about, Austerbach said.

Your Mr. Thompson being one of them?

Right, Matson, our Mr. Thompson being one of them.

If we weren’t supposed to know, who reported it?

Someone from the maid service, new on the job, called it in when she found him.

We’ll have to talk to her, Smith said.

All in good time. I’m letting you in on this because I trust you and because I don’t need another one of these things happening.

You mean there are more Eric Thompsons in New York under your care?

I am in no position to confirm or deny the existence of other subjects in New York. I will say that we are in transition mode, meaning people are being moved to other locations. You’ll have to sign the official Secrets Act.

Why not get the FBI involved and let them investigate?

Can’t allow that transvestite Hoover in on this. It would put the president in hot water. Besides, I don’t like the son of a bitch. His operation has more holes than a sieve and would put more people at risk. No, I want you boys to handle it for me.

He showed us to the elevator, and we went to the ninth floor. The doors bore no numbers, but Austerbach knew exactly where to go. He went to the fourth door on the right, punched a series of numbers on a pad, and there was a buzz, followed by the sound of a door magnetically unlocking. The door opened.

The room was dimly lit. Austerbach turned a knob on the wall to increase the lighting. In the hallway, there were multiple photographs of Mr. Thompson with military leaders in the German Army: Walter Dornberg, Arthur Rudolf, Fritz Hoffman, and Wernher von Braun, and in the middle of all of them were Ike and Truman, as if these men had done nothing during the war except murder and maim innocent people with rockets. Other men were there, those who looked like they had been involved with other types of weapons development for the Nazis. Hitler would boast that he had in production weapons that would end the war, but the Allies had a greater capacity to destroy Germany’s war-making ability. So, a few rockets wouldn’t have made a difference. On another wall was a Monet, a Rembrandt, and even a Picasso.

Austerbach took us to the deceased. I asked, Have you touched the body or have you altered the scene in anyway?

The silence that followed told me that the scene had been altered. The man we found was lying in bed, wearing striped pajamas and a big smile on his face. It was a canopy bed, but what was curious about it was the enlarged photograph of Adolf Hitler, looking down on the corpse. The Führer, as guardian angel, was a little shocking even for me. As opposed to the others, this man was hiding in plain sight. In his closet were a number of SS uniforms with multiple medals for bravery in the service of the fatherland.

The chest of drawers showed a very neat and organized man who had divisions for blue socks, one for black, and another for white. The second drawer had boxer shorts of a singular color: white. I looked through the underwear and found a small photograph of him and his Führer. It was signed: Einem Mann, der tun wird, was es braucht, um seinem Land zu dienen (To a man who will do what it takes to serve his country), signed Adolf Hitler.

Now, we have two and possibly three high-ranking Nazis dead in a three-block radius, all having art from some pretty big names in their New York apartments. Two hiding, the other showing the world that he was what he was.

I told Austerbach that I would call in the forensic team to gather evidence. If he needed to make calls to clear it with the higher-ups, he should start dialing. He left the room. I used the phone in the hallway to call the forensic desk and tell them to get O’Neal here because this was important.

The boss is still working the first crime scene, and then he still has to direct the second. It is going to be a while, Mildred said.

Baby, all three cases are related, and I guess that anything we say over the phone is being recorded. This is a federal fuck-up of major proportions, and I’m going to need him.

I’ll relay the message, handsome. When are you going to dump the blonde and shack up with me?

If it weren’t for the fact that you are sixty-eight years old, I’d think about it.

Women are like wine; we get better with age.

Mildred, just tell the boss I need him.

Will do, baby, will do.

I walked back into the bedroom and began to take pictures. Austerbach asked if all the pictures were necessary. That’s crime scene investigation 101: Document the scene of the crime. This is the scene of the crime, isn’t it?

He stared at me with contempt because I’d figured out his little game. Alter the scene to muddy the circumstances of the murder.

Smith and I walked into the study. There on the desk was a silver Totenkopf glaring at us. A bust of Hitler on a pedestal was to the right. Behind the desk was a bookshelf with an eclectic collection of books. There were medical books that belonged in a doctor’s study, such as Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, Sabastian’s Principles of Surgery, and Anderson’s Pathology, but others were more specific, dealing with tropical medicine, infectious diseases, microbiology, and microbial physiology. There were numerous reprints of articles in medical journals, journals on clinical bacteriology and virology. Then there were the histories: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, books on the Crusades and the Middle Ages. We saw no novels, not even classical novels. No Alexander Dumas, no Voltaire, no Mann, no Hemingway, only medicine, bacteriology, and history.

Austerbach returned with the okay, and so the forensic department had been given this turd to make smell like a rose. Reminded me of Alice in Wonderland where the caterpillar, smoking his hookah, asks, Who are you? Whoooo arrree yooou?

The chair looked like a Louis the XIV with good padding in the center. There was a depression in it where someone had been sitting. I looked for blood and found none. I smelled the seat of the chair and detected ammonia; no, it was more like urea. Someone had urinated in the chair. When someone dies, the smooth muscles relax, and when that does, the corpse releases both urine and feces. I looked around the chair and found traces of feces. I took photographs because this was the place where our victim had died.

CHAPTER THREE

I made another phone call, this one to Helpern at the Medical Examiner’s office and explained to him the situation.

I don’t talk about my cases to the newspapers. I don’t conduct interviews on the radio. When I go home at night, I don’t talk to my wife about my day. I let her talk about hers.

I didn’t mean to suggest that you did. It’s the fact that we’re dealing with the federal government, and they have put certain restrictions on us in order to proceed.

I see. I’ll go personally and do the scene investigation, and I’ll see you at your current address.

I don’t see why you can’t use our photographs for your case file.

You just said the reason; they are your photographs. My photographs and crime scene diagrams are based on my perception of the case, how I see things, and my eyes see things differently from your eyes and anyone else’s eyes in discerning what I think is relevant.

Alright, doc. But there are three scenes that have to be processed in the same manner, all of them are close by. You got a pen? I’ll dictate them to you… I gave him the addresses and hung up.

He was a very finicky individual, Helpern, always wearing a pristine white coat, which looked like it had been starched and ironed that morning. I had assisted him in a few cases, and, unlike Gonzales who would let me do some cases on my own, Helpern wanted me only to pass instruments and keep quiet. It wasn’t that he didn’t respect my knowledge, and it had nothing to do with the color of my skin. He just didn’t want the evidence contaminated. He thought that only he could hear what the dead were trying to tell him because he was their advocate. He once told me that he spoke for the dead, and it was his responsibility to get it right and no one else’s.

Forensic pathologists are a strange breed within a strange breed of doctors. Pathologists are men and women who have relegated themselves to the laboratory. They are more interested in what is going on than in curing the patient. These people look at tissue through microscopes and examine urine, blood, and feces to tell the treating physician what ails his patient. The treating physician guesses; the pathologist knows what is going on. The medical examiner—the forensic pathologist—deals with only one question: Why did he die? He believes that there is a reason why people die. He uses his skills to determine cause and manner of death, to establish if a crime was committed. Sometimes it is obvious: a gunshot wound to the head with blood and gray matter splattered everywhere. But others are not so easy, like this case. They’re the first to tell us that crime-solving is a team effort. Pathologist, detective, and crime-scene technicians all contribute to the solution of cases.

We all know that the end is coming sooner or later, but the ME wants to know why the patient died today and not tomorrow. He wants to know if their maker called them or if someone had sent them on their way. Most naturals—those folks that die from natural causes—usually don’t get post-mortems. Certainly, these deaths wouldn’t have had one if it weren’t for the fact that all three men had the same name, dying on the same day within a three-block radius of each other.

O’Neal came through the door with Harvey, the fingerprint technician.

Laddie, what in heaven is going on here?

Don’t know, boss. Don’t know.

Well, the other two teams are processing the apartments, but by the time I headed your way, they had found nothing.

Nothing at the site? That’s not possible.

It is as if Locard’s principles didn’t apply, that between two surfaces a transfer occurs. If someone did do this, he is well versed in the forensic sciences.

Any additional documents in the other two apartments?

Oh, yes, my boyo. Some in German, others in English, mostly about diseases I’ve never heard of, but they were classified. It looks like these boys were knee deep in some very nasty shit.

Harvey had kept quiet, looking at the photos of our Mr. Thompson with top Nazi brass and with Ike and Truman, and shook his head. These bastards killed a lot of people, a lot of my people. They should have gotten a taste of their own medicine in 1945. The gas chamber would have been too easy for the bastards.

Harvey, I didn’t know you were Jewish.

I’m not. My people are from Romania, gypsies. Hitler murdered thousands of my people, too. Harvey excused himself and started dusting the room for prints.

Smith went out and asked Austerbach where he could locate the woman who had found the corpse. Austerbach told Smith he’d get her to him, and so we both waited for her. As I was waiting, I looked at the paintings that adorned this fellow’s the walls. I took down the Monet. On the wall behind it was a safe made of shiny brass and stainless steel. I did the same to each painting and found a safe behind each one.

Austerbach, who entered with the girl who had found the body, claimed ignorance of the safes and didn’t know the combinations. I didn’t believe him, but I told him I had people who could open it. Within an hour, Butch Mendoza had arrived and did the honors of opening the safes. He did it the old-fashioned way with a stethoscope, listening to the tumblers click. Butch had done a stretch at Attica before getting religion and becoming a dry cleaner close to the projects. The department called him time and again to do a service like this one.

It took Butch about two hours to open all three safes. He was an extremely quiet man, and when he worked, he appreciated if no one talked. When he was finished, he took his bag with the instruments of his former trade and left. I tried to thank him, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He was a short man with a Fu Manchu mustache and a round belly. A quiet man, he was interested only in opening the safes but not n knowing what was in them.

The only thing I got from Butch was, Have to go to the store. Got to go. I guess he liked his old profession a lot, and any time he could do it for us, he thought we were doing him a favor.

The contents of the first safe had two passports. A German passport, issued to Otto Hoffman, showed the youthful appearance of Eric Thompson No. 2. The passport, dated 1938, evidenced that our boy had traveled a great deal: Syria, Congo, Argentina, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic.

The American passport, dated 1945, gave a similar travel history but included the Ivory Coast and Nigeria. There was a legal pad with names, not of people but of what looked like species. I wasn’t sure what these were. I’d never heard of these things: Mycoplasma hominis, Ureaplasma urealyticum, and others.

There was a journal in German which was hard for me to read. I decided to pocket it and show it to my friends in Greenwich Village, Dr. James Brussel and his wife. There were mementos of the war and photographs. Among the photos was one of three young men in lab coats, and on the backside of the Kodak paper, an inscription, written in beautiful cursive handwriting, was Insel Labor (Laboratory) 1940.

The second safe had similar contents. The 1945 American passport had a photograph of our first Eric Thompson. His Reich passport had his true name of Henrich Mienter. This safe had more personal things: a stack of love letters from a woman named Marlena, no last name, dating back to 1938 and abruptly stopping in 1942. No reason given why he stopped writing to her; maybe he married the woman, although there was no marriage certificate in the safe. It was most likely she had become one of the civilian casualties of the war. I found a second legal pad in the second safe. It contained a series of names of some animals I had never heard.

I felt someone standing behind me. It was Austerbach who was trying to look over my shoulder.

Can I help you, commander? I asked.

I want to explain to you that the contents of these safes fall under the Official Secrets Act.

You mean a couple of old photographs, love letters to a woman, and some strange names are so sensitive to the government that they fall under the Secrets Act?

Son, I don’t make the rules up. I’ve been told that those materials cannot leave the apartment. In fact, you’re in violation just by handling them.

By this time, I had already placed the journal of Otto Hoffman in my coat pocket and wasn’t about to give it up. I told Austerbach that I appreciated the information and the latitude he was giving me by letting me look at the materials. What my old commander had forgotten was that I had a photographic memory. Anything I looked at instantly was copied to my brain and locked away. So, I did not need the journals, papers, and photographs with me; they were in my head.

I moved on to the third safe and found only two items: a German passport dating back to the 1920s and an American passport issued in 1949. It identified the third victim as Eric Traub, and stamps indicated visits to America in the late 1920s and in the early 1930s. There were no other documents in the safe. All his memorabilia were on the walls of his apartment in plain sight.

Helpern showed up and told me that I should be in the morgue at 10:00 a.m. the next day and expect a full day of work. He took his photographs, but Smith smiled because he would later tell me that the maid had found the victim in the toilet with his Johnson in his hand and a couple of girly magazines on the floor. So, Helpern’s photographs didn’t reflect the state in which she had found the body.

The area had been staged for our benefit but why? How did they know we’d get here? Or were they staging the scene for some funeral director who’d have to enter the apartment to pick up a body? Were the paintings originals, and if they were, how did three dead Nazis get them? I had more questions about these individuals than I had about who had committed the murders. Why were three Nazis, members of the SS, hiding in plain sight in New York? Why was the government protecting them to the point where they would stage crime scenes, and to protect whom? Certainly not the victims’ reputations. They were criminals who had fled the international court at Nuremburg, and the U.S. government had hidden them. Someone had found them and exacted justice because they knew the U.S. government was going to protect these men from any criminal court. Who would go to all that trouble to the point that they made it look natural?

I came to the conclusion that to solve the crime, I had to solve the true nature of who these men were and what made them so special to the government. That meant finding out what these strange names meant, what was written in the notebook I had in my pocket, and who owned these paintings. Three Nazis with French Impressionist paintings on the wall. I smelled a rat somewhere but where?

CHAPTER FOUR

It was late in the afternoon, and I walked out onto the street with the notebook still in my pocket. I didn’t want the government to tell me what was in the notebook by getting a redaction of what it contained or a fairy tale they’d create for my benefit. No, I wanted to know what this man had taken the time to write. I also wanted to write down the things I had seen in those safes so I could ascertain their meaning.

Smith had walked with me downstairs, but we didn’t say much in the building for fear that listening devices had been planted. Working for the government in a police capacity like we did tended to make us paranoid. When we’d reached the street, the cold winter wind was blowing furiously, but we decided to walk without saying a word. We reached the subway station and walked down to the platform. The brown light of the dirty luminescent bulbs with their hypnotic buzz met us as we descended the stairs. The smell of urine, coffee, and hotdogs permeated the air. People were rushing about trying to get home, trying to avoid the cold as quickly as they could.

Before reaching the A-train platform, Smith stopped in front of a newsstand. What do you think, partner?

Someone wants me—you specifically—to investigate this. They don’t trust the FBI, probably afraid that J. Edgar will use the information to hold over them. They want us to provide the who, but in order to do that, I have to know the why.

The why?

Why the government was harboring known Nazis, why they were here in New York, oh, and who the fuck were these guys? I pulled out the notebook.

What’s that? Smith asked.

It’s a clue I found in one of the safes, a notebook one of the victims had left there. It’s in German.

You know German. What does it say?

My German is conversational, but my reading and writing is really poor. I’m going to get some help translating it.

Who?

Best you don’t know in case they ask you.

I left him there and took the train to Greenwich Village. I arrived at the rowhouse and office of James Brussel, psychiatrist. He would become prominent as one of the first criminal profilers by predicting the type of person involved in the bombings of the city. Several months away, George Peter Metesky would be found at his sister’s home in Connecticut. Brussel will predict that the man was a disgruntled employee of Con Ed, a loner, single, and very disturbed. Metesky would be locked away in a mental institution until his release in 1976. I kept close watch on him after that. It wasn’t too much later that the Mad Bomber of New York passed away in his sleep.

I walked up to Brussel’s door and knocked. His wife Alena opened the door. My dear, come in. It is awfully cold out there.

I stepped inside their cozy home filled not only with warmth from the furnace but warmth from my two friends. James was in his office with a patient.

Alena invited me into the kitchen. You looked troubled, my dear, she said in her thick German accent. The kitchen was the warmest place in the house. Coffee was brewing, and the delicious aroma pastries in the oven made my mouth water.

I’ve found something I’d like for you to translate for me. My German isn’t that good, but I have to tell you that if you do, it might not only upset you but also get you in trouble.

It was rare for Alena to wear a short-sleeved blouse. I noticed a series of numbers tattooed to her right forearm. She saw that I was looking at the tattoo. "It is a present the Nazis gave us at Buchenwald, one of their conzentrationslager (concentration camps)."

I’m sorry.

You have nothing to be sorry about. It wasn’t you who gave me this mark. She started staring at the wall behind me. She was far away, somewhere else, not there in the nice warm kitchen in the village.

She began talking about her life before coming to America.

"I was fourteen when they began marching up and down the street in their brown uniforms and singing their vulgar songs. They told people that the reason Germany was destroyed in the war was because the Jews had crippled their country. The Arian race should be pure, free of all the things which brought down the race, especially Jews, but they weren’t the only ones persecuted. In 1935 the Nuremberg laws restricted Jews’ ability to make a living and to move about in the country. I wasn’t allowed to go to school because of my designation as a Jew. My parents weren’t religious. My father was a pharmacist helping thousands of people in our city, but that didn’t matter. They broke the windows to his shop, painted over the Star of David, and threw urine and manure at his door.

"In August 1942, we were asked to board a train to a camp for Jews. Buchenwald wasn’t a summer camp; it was a death camp. I was separated for the first time from my parents. They had to walk between two tall barbed-wire fences to a building where they were told that they had to take a shower before entering the camp. I never saw them again. I learned later that since I was young and strong, I had been designated as a worker, but my parents had been designated for extermination.

For three years, I struggled working in the sorting house separating clothing, jewelry, money, teeth, and other items to be recycled into the Nazi war machine. When someone couldn’t work any longer, they used that person’s body for experiments. Men and women were dissected under anesthesia, just to look at their organs to find an anatomical reason for saying the Jews, the gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and Russians were different from us. I worked until the liberation, half-starved, half-mad. I was let loose on the road to Berlin.

Tears started to roll down her cheek, as she told the story of depravity which she met on the road. Bands of Russian soldiers, drunk with victory and vodka, raped her repeatedly. She stumbled into Berlin and someone in the American sector picked her up. The men who had found her in Berlin took her to a building for displaced persons, and there, in his uniform and white coat, was James. She said that at first, it was hard for her to deal with anyone in a uniform and white coat, having known about the cruelties done at Buchenwald. He tried so hard to bring her out, and finally, one day, she broke down and told him the story she’d just told me.

After a while, she began to help the displaced as they arrived. She began to learn English, and with the money she was making, she could take care of herself. James had asked her out, and they began to see each other after work. Finally, when James’s tour of duty ended, he asked her to marry him, she accepted, and they came to this country.

I sat there spellbound by this story of tragedy and triumph, knowing that what I was about to ask her would be very difficult for her to do. She ended her story about how they came here to New York to start their life together. They’d tried to have children, but it never happened for them. She didn’t say why it hadn’t happened. They thought of adopting a child, and maybe that would be the right direction to take.

I took the notebook out of my coat pocket and slid it over the table to her. But before she opened it, I said, Alena, I took this from a safe in a man’s apartment. He was a Nazi who had been hiding in this country for some time.

She took the notebook from me. You know that this is evidence that the government harbors these animals in our country. They give them a chance to have new lives and families, and the government gives them an opportunity to build on the work these beasts did in the camps.

I want to know who this man is and why was he so important that the government hid him from the War Crimes Court.

There is talk about a secret government program where Russians, British, and Americans gathered certain scientists and high-profile party officials, those not necessarily in the public eye, to be used for their expertise, centered around the rocket-making, but I gather that other areas of war-making also produced scientists of interest to the governments of the world.

I need this translated as soon as possible before they find out that it’s missing, I said. I don’t want you to get caught up in this.

I will help you understand what these men did, but I will not help you find their killer.

Alena, I don’t know that they were killed.

I’m sure that someone wanted these men who had inflicted pain on many thousands of people. As Shylock wanted, ‘The pound of flesh which I demand of him is dearly bought; ’tis mine and I will have it.’ If I had known of these three, I would have demanded my pound and more.

I just want to know the why my government would harbor these men, and, at this point, that’s all I want.

I know you, my friend. Remember you pursued the fiend who murdered those girls, at great personal risk to you and Sissy. I believe you tell yourself that this is about the why of things, but eventually, you will find out the who.

Again, the image of Alice’s caterpillar and his proverbial question, ‘Whooo are youuu?’ kept rolling in my head.

James came into the kitchen, and we talked not about the case but about other more mundane things. He was in line for a position at Columbia Presbyterian’s Psychiatry Department, teaching medical students in their psychiatry rotation. He asked how it was going in forensics and when I was going to start classes again. I gave him an evasive answer, that I wanted Sissy to finish first before I started back up. It wasn’t completely the truth, but right now, I didn’t want to tell him that I had found the classroom dull and uninteresting. I’d be sitting there with children who were more concerned about their hair and clothes than about the information I was giving them.

I left the Brussels and told them I’d be back in a few days to pick up the notebook I had given to Alena. She smiled and said she’d have it done by tomorrow. I told her not to rush.

As I walked to the subway, the cold wind lashed my face like knives. By the time I got home, Sissy was already cooking dinner. I thought about how lucky I was to have someone in my life who supported what I did and loved me anyway.

Well, tiger, how are they hanging?

Just as ready as they were this morning.

Oh, really. She came over and grabbed my crotch and found to her surprise the man was ready to go to work.

Baby, you are ready.

I lifted her up and took her to bed and made love to get, much to my regret later when my steak was too well done.

We had our dinner and listened to music on the radio. By 10:00, she’d cleaned things up and started on her homework, and I went to bed. I had a dream about butterflies, hundreds and hundreds of butterflies, all black and red with tiny silver dots on their wings. When I got close to them, the dots were Totenkopf laughing at me.

CHAPTER FIVE

The following morning, I woke up while Sissy was still asleep. I liked waking up first because it gave me time just to look at her, to truly feel that I was blessed. She was a beautiful, intelligent woman who wanted to be with me. Even now, old, overweight, balding, with skin tags where there just used to be skin, she presses her body to me in the morning, and my world becomes better. I looked at her that morning with that mixture of awe and desire that overwhelms the senses and pulled her close. I kissed the nape of her neck and just held her there until she said, Baby, you woke up in a good mood.

She turned over and kissed me.