The Charlie Parker Collection 2

by John Connolly

  ‘Keep me informed, please.’

  ‘I will.’

  They exchanged farewells, and hung up. Ross summoned Brad back into his presence and told him to put a trace on Parker’s cell phone, and two men on Rabbi Epstein.

  ‘I want to know where Parker is before the end of the day,’ he said.

  ‘Do you want him brought in?’

  ‘No, just make sure nothing happens to him,’ said Ross. ‘A little late for that, isn’t it, sir?’ said Brad.

  ‘Get the hell out of here,’ said Ross, but he thought: from the mouths of babes . . .

  27

  I made the call to Epstein from a pay phone on Second Avenue outside an Indian restaurant that was offering an all-you-can-eat buffet that nobody wanted to eat, so in an effort to drum up business a sad-faced man in a bright polyester shirt had been posted at the door to hand out flyers that nobody wanted to read. It was raining, and the flyers hung damply from his hand.

  ‘I’ve been expecting your call,’ said Epstein.

  ‘For a long time, from what I hear,’ I replied.

  ‘I take it that you’d like to meet.’

  ‘You take it right.’

  ‘Come to the usual place. Make it late. Nine o’clock. I look forward to seeing you again.’

  Then he hung up.

  I was staying in an apartment at 20th and 2nd, just above a locksmith’s store. It extended over two decent-size rooms, with a separate kitchen that had never been used, and a bathroom that was just wide enough to accommodate a full rotation of the human body, as long as the body in question kept his arms at his sides. There was a bed, a couch, and a couple of easy chairs, and a TV with a DVD player but no cable. There was no phone, which was why I’d called Epstein from a pay phone. Even then, I’d stayed on the line for only the minimum time required to arrange our meeting. I had already taken the precaution of removing the battery from my cell phone, and had bought a temporary replacement from a drugstore.

  I picked up some pastries from the bakery next door, then went back to the apartment. The landlord was sitting on a chair to the right of the living room window. He was cleaning a SIG pistol, which was not what landlords usually did in their tenants’ apartments, unless the landlord in question happened to be Louis.

  ‘So?’ he said.

  ‘I’m meeting him tonight.’

  ‘You want company?’

  ‘A second shadow wouldn’t hurt.’

  ‘Is that a racist remark?’

  ‘I don’t know. You do minstrel songs?’

  ‘Nope, but I brought you a gun.’ He reached into a leather bag and tossed a small pistol on the couch.

  I removed the gun from its holster. It was about seven inches long, and weighed less than two pounds.

  ‘Kimber Ultra Ten Two,’ said Louis. ‘Ten-shot box magazine. Rear corner of the butt is sharp, so watch it.’

  I put the gun back in its holster and handed it to him.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ he said.

  ‘No, I’m not. I want my license to carry back. I get caught with an unregistered firearm, and I’m done. They’ll flay me alive, then toss what’s left in the sea.’

  Angel appeared from the kitchen. He had a pot of coffee in one hand.

  ‘You think whoever killed Wallace tortured him to find out his taste in music?’ he said. ‘He was cut so that he’d tell what he’d learned about you.’

  ‘We don’t know that for sure.’

  ‘Yeah, like we don’t know evolution for sure, or climate change, or gravity. He was killed in your old house, while investigating you, and then someone signed off on it in blood. Pretty soon, that someone is going to try to do to you what was done to Wallace.’

  ‘That’s why Louis is going to stick with me tonight.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Louis, ‘’cause if I get caught with a gun, then it’s okay. Black man always slides on gun charges.’

  ‘I heard that,’ said Angel. ‘I think it’s a self-defense thing: brother-on-brother crime.’

  He took the bag of pastries, tore it open, and laid it on the small, scarred coffee table. Then he poured me a cup of coffee, and took a seat beside Louis as I told them everything that I had learned from Jimmy Gallagher.

  The Orensanz Center had not changed since last I had visited it some years earlier. It still dominated its section of Norfolk Street, between East Houston and Stanton, a neo-gothic structure designed by Alexander Seltzer in the nineteenth century for the arriving German Jews, his vision inspired by the great cathedral of Cologne and the tenets of German romanticism. Then it was known as the Anshei Cheshed, the ‘People of Kindness,’ before that congregation merged with the Temple Emanuel, coinciding with the migration of the German Jews from Kleine Deutschland in Lower Manhattan to the Upper East Side. Their place was taken by Jews from eastern and southern Europe, and the neighborhood became a densely populated warren thronged by those who were still struggling to cope with this new world both socially and linguistically. Anshei Chesed became Anshei Slonim, after a town in Poland, and thus it remained until the 1960s, when the building began to fall into disrepair, only to be rescued by the sculptor Angel Orensanz and converted into a cultural and educational center.

  I did not know what the Rabbi Epstein’s connection to the Orensanz Center was. Whatever status he enjoyed, it was unofficial yet powerful. I had seen some of the secrets that the center hid below its beautiful interior, and Epstein was the keeper of them.

  When I entered, there was only an old man sweeping the floor. He had been there when last I visited, and he had been sweeping then too. I guessed that he was always there: cleaning, polishing, watching. He looked at me and nodded in recognition.

  ‘The rabbi is not here,’ he said, instinctively understanding that there could be no other reason for my presence in this place.

  ‘I called him,’ I said. ‘He’s expecting me. He’ll be here.’

  ‘The rabbi is not here,’ he repeated with a shrug.

  I took a seat. There didn’t seem to be any point in prolonging the argument. The old man sighed, and went back to his sweeping.

  Half an hour passed, then an hour. There was no sign of Epstein. When at last I stood to leave, the old man was seated at the door, his broom held upright between his knees like a banner held aloft by some ancient, forgotten retainer.

  ‘I told you,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, you did.’

  ‘You should listen better.’

  ‘I get that a lot.’

  He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘The rabbi,’ he said, ‘he does not come here so much now.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He has fallen out of favor, I think. Or perhaps it is too dangerous for him now, for all of us. It is a shame. The rabbi is a good man, a wise man, but some say that what he does is not fit for this, this Bet Shalom.’

  He must have noticed my puzzlement. ‘A house of peace,’ he explained. ‘Not Sheol. Not here.’

  ‘Sheol?’

  ‘Hell,’ he said. ‘Not here. No longer here.’

  And he tapped his foot meaningfully on the floor, indicating the hidden places beneath. When last I had visited the Orensanz Center, Epstein had shown me a cell beneath the basement of the building. In it, he had secured a thing that called itself Kittim, a demon that wished to be a man, or a man who believed himself to be a demon. Now, if what the old man was saying was true, Kittim was gone from this place, banished along with Epstein, his captor.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Bevakashah,’ he replied. ‘Betakh ba-Adonai va’asei-tov.’

  I left him there, and stepped outside into the cold spring sunlight. I had come here for nothing, it seemed. Epstein was no longer comfortable being at the Orensanz Center, or the center was no longer willing to countenance his presence. I looked around, half expecting to see him waiting nearby, but there was no sign of him. Something had happened: he was not coming. I tried to pick out Louis, but there was no trace of him either. Still, I knew he was clo
se. I walked down the steps and headed toward Stanton. After a minute, I felt someone begin to fall into step beside me. I looked to my left and saw a young Jewish man wearing a skullcap and a loose fitting leather jacket. He kept his right hand in his jacket pocket. I thought I could discern the gunsight of a small pistol digging into the material. Behind me, another young man was shadowing my footsteps. They both looked strong and fast.

  ‘You took your time in there,’ said the man to my left. He had the slightest hint of an accent. ‘Who knew you had such patience?’

  ‘I’ve been working on it,’ I said.

  ‘It was much needed, I hear.’

  ‘Well, I’m still working on it, so maybe you’d like to tell me where we’re going.’

  ‘We thought you might like to eat.’

  He steered me on to Stanton. Between a deli that didn’t appear to have bought fresh stock since the previous summer, judging by the number of dead insects scattered among the bottles and jars in the window, and a tailor who seemed to regard silk and cotton as passing fads that would ultimately bow down before artificial fibers, was a small kosher diner. It was dimly lit, with four tables inside, the wood dark and scarred by decades of hot coffee cups and burning cigarettes. A sign on the glass in Hebrew and English announced that it was closed.

  Only one table was occupied. Epstein sat in a chair facing the door, his back to the wall. He was wearing a black suit with a white shirt and a black tie. A dark overcoat dangled from a hook behind his head, topped by a narrow-brimmed black hat, as though their occupant were not sitting below them but had recently dematerialized, leaving only his clothing as evidence of his previous existence.

  One of the young men grabbed a chair and carried it outside, then took a seat with his back to the window. His companion, the one who had spoken to me on the street, sat inside but on the opposite side of the door. He did not look back at us.

  There was a woman behind the counter. She was probably in her early forties, but in the shadows of the little diner she could have passed for a decade younger. Her hair was very dark, and when I passed her I could see no trace of gray in it. She was also beautiful, and smelled faintly of cinnamon and cloves. She nodded at me, but she did not smile.

  I took the seat across from Epstein but turned so that I also had a wall against my back, and could see the door.

  ‘You could have told me that you were persona non grata at the Orensanz Center,’ I said.

  ‘I could, but it would not have been true,’ said Epstein. ‘A decision was made, one that was entirely mutual. Too many people pass through its doors. It was not fair, or wise, to put them at risk. I am sorry to have kept you waiting, but there was a purpose: we were watching the streets.’

  ‘And did you find anything?’

  Epstein’s eyes twinkled. ‘No, but had we ventured further into the shadows then something, or someone, might have found us. I suspected that you would not come alone. Was I right?’

  ‘Louis is nearby.’

  ‘The enigmatic Louis. It is good to have such friends, but bad to have such need of them.’

  The woman brought food to our table: baba ghanoush with small pieces of pitta bread; burekas; and chicken cooked with vinegar, olives, raisins, and garlic, with some couscous on the side. Epstein gestured to the food, but I did not eat.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘About the Orensanz Center. I don’t think I believe that you’re on such good terms after all.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You don’t have a congregation. You don’t teach. You travel everywhere with at least one gunman. Today you have two. And there was something you said to me, a long time ago. We were talking, and you used the term “Jesus Christ.” None of that strikes me as very orthodox. I can’t help but feel that you might have earned a little disapproval.’

  ‘Orthodox?’ He laughed. ‘No, I am a most unorthodox Jew, but still a Jew. You’re a Catholic, Mr. Parker—’

  ‘A bad Catholic,’ I corrected.

  ‘I’m not in a position to make such judgments. Still, I am aware that there are degrees of Catholicism. I fear that there are many more degrees of Judaism. Mine is cloudier than most, and sometimes I wonder if I have spent too long divorced from my own people. I find myself using terms that I have no business using, slips of the tongue that embarrass me, and worse, or entertaining doubts that do not entertain me. So, perhaps it would be true to say that I left Orensanz before I was asked to leave. Would that make you more comfortable?’ He gestured once again at the food. ‘Now eat. It’s good. And our hostess will be offended if you do not taste what she has prepared.’

  I hadn’t arranged the meeting with Epstein to play semantic games, or to sample the local cuisine, but he had a way of manipulating conversations to his own satisfaction, and I had been at a disadvantage from the moment I traveled here to meet him. Yet there had been no choice. I could not imagine Epstein, or his minders, permitting an alternative arrangement.

  So I ate. I inquired politely after Epstein’s health and his family. He asked about Sam and Rachel, but he did not pry further into our domestic arrangements. I suspected he was well aware that Rachel and I were no longer together. In fact, I now believed that there was little about my life of which Epstein was not aware, and it had always been that way, right from the moment my father approached him about the mark on the man who died beneath the wheels of a truck, and whose partner had subsequently killed my birth mother.

  When we were done, baklava was brought to the table. I was offered coffee, and accepted. I added a little milk to it, brought to me in a sealed container, and Epstein sighed.

  ‘Such a luxury,’ he said. ‘To be able to enjoy a coffee with milk so soon after one’s meal.’

  ‘You’ll have to forgive my ignorance . . .’

  ‘One of the laws of kashrut,’ said Epstein. ‘One is prohibited from eating dairy products within six hours of consuming meat. Exodus: “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.” You see: I am more orthodox than you might think.’

  The woman hovered nearby, waiting. I thanked her for her kindness, and for the food. Despite myself, I had eaten more than I had intended. This time, she did smile, but she did not speak. Epstein made a small gesture with his left hand, and she retreated.

  ‘She’s a deaf mute,’ said Epstein, when her back was turned. ‘She reads lips, but she will not read ours.’

  I glanced at the woman. Her face was turned from us, and she was examining a newspaper, her head bent.

  Now that the time had arrived to confront him, I felt something of my anger at him dissipate. He had kept so much hidden for so long, just as Jimmy Gallagher had done, but there were reasons for it.

  ‘I know that you’ve been asking questions,’ he said. ‘And I know that you have received some answers.’

  When I spoke, I thought that I sounded like a petulant teenager.

  ‘You should have told me when we first met.’

  ‘Why? Because you believe now that you had a right to know?’

  ‘I had a father, and two mothers. They all died for me.’

  ‘And that was precisely why you could not be told,’ said Epstein. ‘What would you have done? You were still an angry, violent man when we met: grief-stricken, bent on revenge. You could not be trusted. There are some who would say that you still cannot be trusted. And remember, Mr. Parker: I had lost my son when first we met. My concerns were for him, not for you. Pain and grief are not your exclusive preserves.

  ‘But, still, you are right. You should have been told before now, but perhaps you chose the time that was right for you. You decided when to begin asking the questions that led you here. Most have been answered for you. I will do my best to deal with the rest.’

  Now that the time had come, I was not sure where to start.

  ‘What do you know of Caroline Carr?’

  ‘Next to nothing,’ he said. ‘She came from what is now a suburb of Hartford, Connecticut. Her father died when she was
six, and her mother when she was nineteen. There are no surviving relatives. If she had been bred to be anonymous, one could not have asked for more.’

  ‘But she wasn’t anonymous. Someone came looking for her.’

  ‘So it seems. Her mother died in a house fire. Subsequent investigations revealed that it might have been started deliberately.’

  ‘Might have been?’

  ‘A cigarette smoldering at the bottom of a trash can, with papers piled on top of it, and a gas stove that was not turned off fully. It could have been an accident, except neither Caroline nor her mother smoked.’

  ‘A visitor?’

  ‘There were no visitors that night, according to Caroline. Her mother sometimes entertained gentlemen, but on the night that she died only she and Caroline were asleep in the house. Her mother drank. She was asleep on the couch when the fire broke out, and was probably dead before the flames reached her. Caroline escaped by climbing out of an upstairs window. When we met, she told me that she saw two people watching the house from the woods while it burned: a man and a woman. They were holding hands. But by that time someone had raised the alarm, and there were neighbors rushing to help her, and the fire trucks were on their way. Her main concern was for her mother, but the first floor had already been engulfed. When she thought again about the man and the woman, they were gone.

  ‘She told me that she believed the couple in the woods had started the fire, but when she tried to tell the police of what she had seen they dismissed the sighting as irrelevant, or as the imaginings of a grief-stricken young woman. But Caroline saw them again, shortly after her mother’s funeral, and became convinced that they intended to do to her what they had done to her mother; or that, in fact, she might have been the target all along.’

  ‘Why would she think that?’

  ‘A sense she had. The way they looked at her, the way she felt when they looked at her. Call it a survival instinct. Whatever the reason for it, she left town after her mother’s funeral, intending to find work in Boston. There, someone tried to push her under a T train. She felt a hand on her back, and teetered on the edge of the platform before a young woman pulled her to safety. When she looked around, she saw a man and a woman moving toward the exit. The woman glanced back at her, and Caroline said she recognized her from Hartford. The second time she saw them was at South Station, as she boarded a train to New York. She thought that they were watching her from the platform, but they didn’t follow her.’