Read Online The Body In The Big Apple by Katherine Hall Page - Free Book Online

now. Emma had never been a good liar.
    â€œTodd took me to him. Before my mother found me and made me return home. My father was living someplace upstate. Neither he nor Todd told me the name of the town. For all our protection. Before that, he’d been out in Oregon, then Minnesota. He moved around a lot, of course. But if I hadn’t found him through Todd, I would have kept looking. I had to see my real father—and he wanted to see me. It was his dream, he told me.”
    â€œDid you know he’d moved into the city?”
    Emma nodded.
    Faith blew at a strand of hair that had fallen into her eyes when the door to the frigid outside opened. One thing was clear. Whether it had occurred to Emma or not—and possibly not—if she went to the authoritiesnow, she could be charged. Concealing the whereabouts of a wanted felon was itself a crime. In any case, she’d certainly make the headlines. And no one would be happy. Not the Stansteads, not the party—and, most especially, not Michael.
    â€œHe thought he would be safe enough after all this time, and he’d changed his name.”
    Yeah, Faith thought, to Fuchs, German for Fox. She began to wonder just how clever a man Fox had been. One would have thought that number one—or at most, number two—in the Instructions for Going Underground Manual read, “Do not assume a name resembling your own. Avoid the same initials.” So, Nathan Fox decided to become Norman Fuchs. Maybe he had luggage.
    â€œâ€˜All old Jewish men look alike,’ Daddy said. He’d grown a beard and cut his hair. It was very gray. I would never have recognized him from the old pictures. He was terribly good-looking back then, don’t you think?”
    Outside the large windows, the skaters endlessly circled the rink, leaving sharp trails and occasionally tracing intricate figures in the ice. A group of schoolkids sent a spray of chips flying up against the glass as they came to a sudden stop before racing off again.
    â€œVery good-looking. Handsome as all get-out, but Emma, weren’t you afraid someone would see the two of you together?”
    â€œWe never went outside. He never did go outside much anyway. He thought too much fresh air was bad for people,” Emma smiled reminiscently. “I used to bring him bialys. There’s a good place near where he lived. He liked to eat them when they were still warm. His grandmother made the best ones, ones you couldreally sink your teeth into, he said. That was my great-grandmother.”
    Faith wasn’t sure she could stand the pathos. And it was true: Like a real bagel, it was hard to get a good bialy these days.
    â€œI’d have brought him more food, but there were some weeks when I couldn’t come, and I didn’t want him to depend on it. So he stuck to his own shopping. He went out to shop once or twice a week. Daddy didn’t care about what he ate.”
    Faith knew there were people like this, but she preferred not to hear about them.
    â€œI couldn’t call him. He didn’t have a phone. We arranged that he’d be home at three o’clock on Tuesdays. Not that he had other places to go, but this way, we’d be sure. If I could make it, fine; if not, fine. Daddy was very nonjudgmental.”
    Of his daughter, perhaps. Few others, apart from some of the working class, had escaped his scathing view of the world. Fox had once put the entire United States of America on trial in a mock version staged in Central Park. Since they didn’t have a permit, the trial ended before a verdict could be reached.
    Emma was buttering a scone. We seem to be developing a pattern here, Faith observed to herself. Emma unburdens herself, feels better, perks up, and I inch closer to prematurely adding Nice ’n Easy to my shopping list.
    â€œThey didn’t name the amount of money they wanted in the note,” Emma pointed out. “And my name hasn’t been in any