The apartment was more than comfortable. It occupied the top two floors of the building, the rest being given over to storage. It was decorated in a vaguely Middle Eastern style: a lot of cushions, a lot of rugs, the dominant tones of red and orange accented by lamps in the corners instead of a central ceiling light. Liat showed me to a guest bedroom with a small private bathroom next door. I showered to cool myself down. When I came out, the lights were off downstairs, and the apartment was quiet.
I put a towel around my waist and sat by the window, looking out on the streets below. I watched couples pass, hand in hand. I saw a man arguing with a child, and a woman remonstrating with them both. I heard music playing in a building nearby, a piano étude that I could not identify. I thought it was a recording until the player stumbled, and a woman laughed in an easy, loving way, and the man’s voice answered and the music ceased. I felt like an outsider here, even though I knew these streets, this city. It was not mine, though. It had never been mine. I was a stranger in a familiar land.
Liat entered the room shortly before midnight. She was wearing a cream nightdress that ended above her knees, and her hair hung loose on her shoulders. I had been sitting in darkness, but now she lit the bedside lamp before coming to me. She took my hand and bid me rise. In the lamplight, she examined me. She traced the scars of old wounds, touching each one with her fingertips, as though taking an account of the toll on my body. When she was done, she placed her right hand against my face, and her expression was one of intense compassion.
When she kissed me, I felt her tears against my skin, and I tasted them upon my lips. It had been so long, and I thought: accept this small gift, this tender, fleeting moment.
Liat: only later did I discover the meaning of her name.
Liat: You are mine.
I woke shortly after seven. Beside me, the bed was empty. I showered, dressed, and went downstairs. The apartment was quiet. When I entered the kitchen, a middle-aged man was preparing the day’s food, and in the restaurant a woman in her sixties was serving coffee and bagels to a short line of customers. Where Epstein and I had sat the night before, an elderly couple now shared a copy of the Forward.
‘Where is Liat?’ I asked the woman behind the counter.
She shrugged, then fumbled in her apron and produced a note. It was not from Liat, but from Epstein. It read:
Progress being made.
Please stay another night.
E
I left the restaurant. One of Epstein’s young men sat at a table outside, drinking mint tea. He didn’t glance at me when I appeared, nor did he try to follow. I had coffee at a bakery on Houston, and thought of Liat. I wondered where she was, and I thought that I knew.
I believed that she was telling Epstein of my wounds.
I spent the rest of the morning drifting, browsing in bookstores and what few record stores remained in the city – Other Music at 4th and Broadway, Academy Records on West 18th Street – before meeting Angel and Louis for lunch at the Brickyard in Hell’s Kitchen.
‘You look different,’ said Angel.
‘Do I?’
‘Yeah, like the cat that got the cream, except maybe a cat that thinks the cream might have been spiked. This woman you were staying with, Liat, what did she look like, exactly?’
‘Old,’ I said.
‘Really?’
‘And gray.’
‘You don’t say? I bet she was a heavy-set woman too.’
‘Very.’
‘I knew it. So she bore no resemblance to that slim, dark-haired piece of work who was pouring the wine last night?’
‘None whatsoever.’
‘That’s very reassuring. Then I guess we’re not celebrating the end of the longest dry spell since the Dust Bowl?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘we’re not celebrating anything. You ordering the chicken wings?’
‘Yep.’
‘Try not to choke on a bone. I’m not sure I could find it in my heart to save you.’
Louis’s mouth twitched. It might have been a smile.
‘For a man who just got laid by one of the Chosen People, you don’t look too happy,’ he said.
‘That’s a large assumption.’
‘You saying I’m wrong?’
‘I’m not saying anything.’
‘Okay, man, be coy.’
‘Is telling you that it’s none of your damn business either way being coy?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Fine. Then I’m being coy.’
‘Well, either you didn’t get laid, or you did get laid and it was no good, because you still don’t look completely happy.’
He was right. I couldn’t have explained why, even if I’d wanted to, except that I had learned nothing of Liat beyond the scent of her body, the curve of her spine, and the taste of her, while I felt that she had looked deep into me. It was nothing to do with her silence: even as she came her eyes were wide, and her fingers touched my oldest, deepest wounds while her eyes sought the scars on my soul, and I sensed her memorizing those too so that she might tell others of what she had discovered.
‘It was a strange night, that’s all,’ I said.
‘Good sex is wasted on you,’ said Angel, with feeling. ‘You’re a lost cause.’
17
Epstein left a message on my cell phone inviting me to meet him at ‘our usual venue’ at nine that night. I wasn’t sure how comfortable I was staying in Liat’s apartment again; it wasn’t that I minded being used for sex so much as I minded being used for something else under the pretense of sex. I called my old NYPD mentor and partner, Walter Cole, and told him that I might need that offer of a bed after all. He told me in turn that they’d let the dog sleep outside tonight, and I could have its basket. I think Walter was still sore that I’d once named a dog after him, even if it was a very nice dog.
Once again Angel and Louis drifted along behind me as we approached the diner, and once again I was shadowed by Epstein’s people. The same, dour, dark-haired young man was standing outside the restaurant when I arrived, still wearing a jacket that was too warm for the weather and holding on very tightly to the gun beneath it. If anything, he looked even more unhappy than the last time we’d met.
‘You should try a loose shirt,’ I said. ‘Or a smaller gun.’
‘Go fuck yourself,’ he said. He didn’t even look at me when he spoke.
‘You learn that language at Hebrew school? Standards are falling.’
‘Fuck you, prick,’ he said, still not looking at me. He was dumb as well as hostile. If you’re going to mouth off at someone then, gun or no gun, it’s a bad idea to allow them a free swing at you. I didn’t take the opportunity to sock him in the jaw or the kidneys, though. I was afraid that he might shoot his foot off. Worse, I was afraid that he might shoot my foot off.
‘Did I do something to upset you?’ I said.
He didn’t reply, just blinked and scowled some more. It was strange, but I thought he might have been trying not to cry.
‘You need to watch your manners,’ I said.
I could see his jaw tensing as his teeth clenched. He looked like he might be about to take a swing at me, or even pull that gun, but he brought himself under control and let out a breath.
‘The rabbi is waiting for you,’ he said.
‘Thanks. It’s been nice talking to you. Let’s not do it again sometime.’
I stepped into the restaurant. Liat was still not present. Instead, the older woman who had handed me the note earlier that day was fussing about behind the counter, and Epstein was seated at the same table as before. When I sat down, Epstein raised an index finger to the woman. She produced two cups of thick, dark Arab coffee, and two small glasses of ice water, then disappeared into the kitchen. A minute or so later, I heard a door slam closed somewhere upstairs. There would be no food and no kosher wine tonight, it seemed.
‘I get the feeling I’ve used up my hospitality quota,’ I said.
‘Not at all,’
said Epstein. ‘If you’d prefer wine, there is a cooler behind the counter, and some food has been prepared for you, should you be hungry.’
‘Coffee is fine.’
‘What were you and Adiv talking about outside?’
‘Just exchanging pleasantries.’
Epstein’s eyes twinkled.
‘You know, his name means “pleasant” in both Arabic and Hebrew; “pleasant”, and “grateful”.’
‘Well, it’s very appropriate. He has quite the career ahead of him as a greeter.’
‘He has feelings for Liat,’ said Epstein.
He was young, much younger than Liat. These things hurt a lot when you’re young. Then again, they also hurt like a bitch when you’re older.
‘And how does she feel about him?’
‘She does not say,’ he replied. He let the double meaning hang.
‘Where is she?’
‘Elsewhere. She will join us soon. She has tasks to accomplish first.’
‘For you?’
He nodded. ‘She told me of your wounds.’
There were to be no secrets here, then. ‘I didn’t know that you read sign language.’
‘I have known Liat for a long time. We have learned to communicate in all sorts of ways.’
‘And what did she say of my wounds?’
‘She told me that she was surprised you were still alive.’
‘I hear that a lot.’
‘So many injuries. So many times when you should have died, but you did not. I wonder why you have been spared?’
‘Maybe I’m immortal.’
‘You would not be the first man to think it. I myself still hope to beat the odds. But, no, I don’t think that you’re immortal. Someday you’ll die: the question is whether you’ll come back again.’
‘Like Brightwell and his kind?’
‘Do you think that you might share something of their nature?’
‘No.’
I sipped the coffee. It was too sweet for me. Arab coffee always has been.
‘You seem very certain of that.’
‘I’m not like them.’
‘That wasn’t the question.’
‘Is this a test?’
‘Call it an exploration of ideas.’
‘Call it what you want. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Do you dream of falling, of burning?’
‘No.’ Yes.
‘I don’t believe you. What do you dream?’
‘Is that why you brought me back here, to interrogate me about my dreams?’
‘There is truth in them, or an attempt to understand truths.’
I pushed the coffee away.
‘Let this go, rabbi. It won’t lead us anywhere profitable.’
Behind me, the door opened. I looked back, expecting to see the dark-haired youth with the thwarted feelings. Instead, it was the object of his desire. Liat was dressed in blue jeans and a long coat of sky blue silk. Her hair was braided once again. She looked very beautiful, even with the gun in her hand.
Two of Epstein’s young men joined us from the kitchen. They were also armed. One of them walked to the front of the restaurant and pulled the shades, cutting us off from outside, while Liat pulled down another shade on the door. The second gunman kept an eye on me while Epstein removed the cell phone from my pocket. It buzzed in his hand. The number of the caller was blocked.
‘Your friends, I assume?’ said Epstein.
‘They worry about my health in the big city.’
‘Answer it. Tell them everything is fine.’
The man who had pulled down the window shades had blond hair and a soft blond beard. It gave him an unfortunate and inappropriate resemblance to a Nazi. He also had a suppressor which he fitted to the muzzle of his pistol before pointing it at my head.
‘Answer it,’ repeated Epstein.
I did as I was told. Long ago, Angel, Louis and I had agreed a series of red-flag words for circumstances just like this one. I used none of them now, but simply told them that all was well. If I called them in, there would be bloodshed, and nothing would ever be the same again. Better to wait, and see how this played out. I had to believe that Epstein did not want me dead, and I knew that I had done nothing that might cause him to turn against me.
‘I thought I could trust you,’ I said, once I had ended the call.
‘My sentiments exactly. Are you armed?’
‘No.’
‘That’s unusual for you. Are you certain?’
I stood slowly, put my hands up, and turned to face the wall. I smelled Liat’s scent, and felt her hands upon me.
‘And there I was thinking we had something special,’ I said to her.
But she, of course, did not reply.
She stepped back, and I sat down again. This time there were no sly looks as she leaned against the counter. Her face betrayed nothing.
‘Why are you behaving like this?’ I asked Epstein. ‘You know what I’ve done. I’ve fought the same fight that you have. Those wounds didn’t come out of nowhere.’
‘I sacrificed a son,’ said Epstein.
‘And I a wife and child.’
‘They were lost to you before all this began.’
‘No, they’re part of it. I know they are.’
‘You know nothing. You don’t even know yourself. The first question one must ask of a thing is, what is its nature? What is your nature, Mr Parker?’
I wanted to spring at him for his dismissal of the deaths of my wife and daughter. I wanted to take his throat in my hands and crush it, to pummel him until there was nothing left but a mask of blood. I wanted to put a gun in the mouths of his thugs, his religious soldiers, and watch them squirm. If those whom I had thought of as allies were prepared to turn their guns on me, then I had no need of enemies.
I took a breath and closed my eyes. When I opened them again the anger had begun to fade. If this was a provocation, I would not rise to it.
‘You’re quoting Marcus Aurelius,’ I said. ‘Either you’ve read the Meditations, or a serial killer novel. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the former, in which case you’ll know he also warned that each day one would meet violent, ungrateful, uncharitable men, and their actions arose through ignorance of good and evil. If you want to understand a man’s nature, he said, look to what he shuns, and what he cleaves to. I think I overestimated you, rabbi. Underneath your cultivated veneer of calm and wisdom, you’re a confused, frightened man.’
‘And I know it,’ he replied. ‘I will admit to it. But you, you refuse to look too deeply into yourself for fear of what you might find there. What are you, Mr Parker? What are you?’
I stood slowly. The man with the suppressor on his gun tracked me.
‘I’m the man who killed the one who took your son,’ I said, and I saw him flinch. ‘I did what you and your people could not. Now what are you going to do, rabbi: shoot me? Bury me somewhere deep along with the others you’ve found, the ones who think they’re fallen angels or risen demons? Do it. I’m tired. Whatever wrong I’ve done, whatever my failings, I’ve tried to make reparation for them. I have nothing left to prove to you. If you think I do, then you’re a fool.’
For a moment nobody moved, and nobody spoke. Liat’s eyes moved from my face to the rabbi’s. He glanced at her, and I saw him give her the barest nod. From the pocket of her coat she produced a sheet of paper and tossed it on the table before me.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘It’s a list of names,’ said Epstein. ‘It’s similar to the one that you gave to me yesterday, but it came from a different source. It’s more recent.’
I didn’t touch it. I left it where it lay.
‘Don’t you want to look at it?’
‘No. I’m done with you. I’m going to walk out of here, and if one of your knuckle-draggers wants to shoot me in the back along the way, then let him, but you’ll all be dead before the night is out. Angel and Louis will tear you apart,
and for the next eleven months, rabbi, every time one of your children rises to say Kaddish for you, they’ll receive a piece of you in the mail.’
Epstein raised his right hand, then let it fall gently. The guns were lowered, and I heard a click as a hammer was slowly eased down. The fear and anger that had briefly animated Epstein left him, and he was once again as he had always been, or seemed to be.
‘If you wish to leave, none here will stop you,’ he said. ‘But look at the list first.’
‘Why?’
Epstein smiled sadly.
‘Because your name is on it.’
18
When I was seventeen, and my mother and I were living with my grandfather in Scarborough, Maine, following my father’s death, a man named Lambton Everett IV would come visit, and he and my grandfather would share a beer on a seat in the yard or, if the weather was cold, they’d share something stronger: blended Scotch, mostly, on the grounds that they weren’t single malt men or, if they were, then they couldn’t afford to be so on a regular basis, and therefore there was no point in raising false expectations for their palates.
Lambton Everett IV was a long string of misery, a man who never owned an item of clothing that fitted him correctly. In part this was because his body was so indiscriminately proportioned that no cloth that was not cut to measure could ever have accommodated his limbs without leaving a sock peeping or a forearm exposed halfway to the elbow. Shirts hung from him like collapsed sails from a mast, and his suits appeared to have been stolen randomly from the dead. Yet even had his suits been made from the finest Italian wool, and his shirts spun from silks beloved of kings, Lambton Everett IV would still have looked like a scarecrow that had tired of its frame and wobbled unsteadily from its field to seek pastures new. With his downturned mouth, and his huge ears, and his balding, pointed head, he was a source of genial terror at Halloween, and prided himself on the fact that he didn’t have to dress up as a ghoul to scare the children.
There hadn’t even been three Lambton Everetts before him: the numeral was an affectation, a private joke that not even my grandfather understood. It lent him a certain gravitas among those who didn’t know him well enough to be able to spot the fraud, and gave his friends and neighbors something over which to shake their heads, which is a very important gift to bequeath to others in certain circles.