Time Bomb

She shook her head. “He was such a nice kid, Milo. Friendly, dependable-really dependable. That’s why when he stopped showing up for work, I was really surprised. Tried to find the number he’d given me when he applied to volunteer, but it was gone. Must have gotten thrown out. Space is at a premium- stuff gets thrown out all the time. I’m sorry.”

Milo said, “He worked here?”

“Yes. Didn’t Janie tell you?”

“No. All I knew was he’d checked out books, done some research.”

“He did research for me, Milo. For over two months. Never missed a day- he was one of my steadiest ones. Really dedicated. His suddenly dropping out bothered me- it wasn’t like him. I asked the other volunteers if they knew what had happened to him but they didn’t. He hadn’t made friends- kept to himself. I tried to get a number for him but he wasn’t listed. Finally, after a couple of weeks of his not showing up, I put it down to impetuous youth. Figured I’d overrated his maturity. I never expected… never knew. How’d it happen, Milo?”

Milo told her about the shooting, told her it had taken place in a dope alley but left out the toxicology report.

She frowned. “He sure didn’t seem like a druggie to me. If any kid was lucid and straight, it was Ike. Unusually straight- almost too serious for his age. He had a really… crisp mind. Still, people can maintain, can’t they?”

“When did he start volunteering?”

“Late April. Walked in off the street and a

“Did they know Ike?”

“No. They just started. Fall interns. The summer group consisted of three students from Yeshiva University in New York, one each from Brown and NYU, and Ike. From Santa Monica College. All the others went back for fall semester. Ike didn’t hang out with them. Kind of a loner, really.”

“You said he was friendly.”

“Yes. That’s odd, isn’t it, now that you mention it. He was friendly- smiled a lot, courteous, but he definitely kept to himself. When Janie told me what had happened, I thought back, realized how little he’d told me about himself during the interview: He’d arrived a few months earlier from back east, was working and going to school. He told me he loved history, wanted to be a lawyer or a historian. He kept steering the conversation away from personal things and toward substance-history, politics, man’s inhumanity to man. I was so taken by his enthusiasm that I went along with it, didn’t ask very many personal questions. Do you think he was hiding something?”

“Who knows?” said Milo. “There’s no record at all of his application?”

“No, sorry. We dump tons. Anything to avoid the paper-glut.”

“Wish I had the luxury,” he said. “By now I dream in triplicate.”

She smiled. “Be thankful you don’t deal with the federal government. After years of haggling, the Justice Department’s finally started turning over names of old Nazis who’re still living here. They all lied on their visa applications and we’re processing to beat the band- meeting with federal prosecutors in the various cities, filling out mountains of forms, trying to persuade them to move faster on drawing up deportation papers. That’s what I was doing in Chicago: trying to sock it to a kindly old geezer who runs a bakery on the South Side- best pastry in town, free samples to all the local kiddies. Only problem is, forty-five years ago that geezer was responsible for gassing eighteen hundred kiddies.”

Milo’s face got hard. “Go

“Go

“Neo-who?”

“Bundists.” She smiled. “Sorry for being esoteric, I was referring to the German-American Bund. It was a big movement in this country, before World War II. Passed itself off as a German-American pride society, but that was just a cover for American Nazism. Bundists were big in the isolationist movement, agitated against U.S. involvement in the war, used the America First cover to press for mandatory sterilization of all refugees- that kind of thing. But they weren’t just a tiny fringe group. They held rallies at Madison Square Garden for thousands of people, complete with swastika ba

“Nutso,” said Milo.

“But dangerous. We’re working overtime keeping an eye on them all.”

“Was Novato involved in investigating any of them?”

“No. We keep the volunteers away from that kind of thing- too dangerous. I’m up to two death threats a week. He did library work: reshelving, working on the index catalogue. I’d call down with a list of references and ask him to get them for me. Sometimes I’d send him to outside libraries- UCLA or Hebrew Union College. Or over to the Federal Building to pick up some documents. He had a motorcycle, which made him perfect for that. Mostly what he did was read- on his own time. Sat in the library until closing time, then took stuff home with him.”

She looked down at the box. “I glanced through it. Seems to be mostly Holocaust history. The origins and structure of the Nazi party and neo-Nazi groups. At least that’s what he checked out. We’ve got a very comprehensive civil rights collection, and we put together an entire section on black slavery. But he didn’t check out any of that. I was surprised. Which just reminds me how easy it is to stereotype- you’ve got to fight it constantly. Still, it’s the first time I can remember a black kid focusing exclusively on the Holocaust. There was something about him, Milo. A naïveté- an optimistic sincerity- that was really touching. You just knew that in a couple of years he was going to get disillusioned and lose some of that. Maybe even all of it. But in the meantime it was nice to see. Why would anyone want to kill him?” She stopped. “Pretty dumb question coming from me.”