The Crime Beat Boxed Set by A C Fuller

Author:A C Fuller [Fuller, A C]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Vivid Books
Published: 2019-10-01T22:00:00+00:00

10

Warren watched shadows dance on Cole’s face as they passed under the lights of an overpass. She appeared lost in thought. Talking about her husband wasn’t easy for her. That much was clear. But there was something she wasn’t sharing, and he needed her to trust him. “I don’t know what it’s like to lose a spouse, not the way you did. But I lost my wife. Drove her away.” He shook his head. “I’m straightened out now, but she’s seeing someone.”

“Who?” she asked, absently.

“Dunno.”

“How do you know?” Before he could answer, she continued. “Never mind, I know. You just know, right? I would have known if Matt was, well...”

“What’s your background?”

She looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Did you always live in New York City?”

“Nah. Moved around a bit. Raised in the city, though. Brooklyn. College in Florida, year in D.C., then moved around when Matt got transferred from base to base. You?”

“Bay Area. Oakland. Scholarship to study criminal justice at John Jay, then 9/11 happened and I joined the Marines. To be honest, I was flunking half my classes and the scholarship was about to go away. But I loved the city. And I met Sarah there.” He’d wondered about Cole’s background since they met, and the next question he wanted to ask could offend if he asked it sloppily. Sarah had been raised in the Bronx, but her parents were Puerto Rican. Warren himself was black. The first day of preschool, his daughter had gotten the question, “What are you?” from a classmate, and hadn’t known how to answer. Hadn’t even known it was a question. She’d been four and hadn’t taken offense. But Cole was an adult, and adults offend easier than children. “Your parents? New Yorkers?”

Cole eyed him. “Mazzalano had a way of asking me that, you know. The line from The Sopranos”—she switched to a bad Tony Soprano impersonation—“‘What part of The Boot you from, hon?’”

Warren chuckled. “So you’re Italian?”

“Mom’s parents were. Dad’s parents, my grandparents, were German Jews who escaped in 1938. Albert and Avigail Kohlberg.”

“Kohlberg? Lemme guess. Ellis Island happened?”

“Nah, I hear a lot of people’s names got lost in translation there, but this was a business decision. Grandparents had been married only a year and my grandfather had taken over his father’s bookstore when the Kristallnacht happened.”

“The what?”

“The Night of Broken Glass. Nazis burning synagogues. Smashing Jewish storefronts.”

“Damn.”

“They were lucky to get out. Kohl was a German name, maybe French-German. At some point the ‘Berg’ was added, so he figured he’d drop the Berg, but he didn’t want to take a German word as his name. So he went with Cole. He figured he could be whoever he wanted in America. He told me before he died that he regretted it. Wished he’d kept the name.”

“Was it a thing back then? A Jewish guy and an Italian woman?”

“I don’t really know. Not a huge thing, I don’t think. Mom’s parents were lapsed Catholics, and my mom wasn’t practicing. Might have been a bigger issue if she was.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.