The Death of Israel Leventhal

by Boom Baumgartner

  Despite himself, Israel chuckled. "Or three. None of this means anything."

  "Sure it does," Amanda said. "In the void, there is everything and nothing. Why can't it mean something and not? It still means something."

  Israel mulled over her words, watching the clouds of smoke billow from the other side of the bridge, eyeing the unmoved pedestrians that went about their day as their city burned.

  He never had trouble keeping the void out before. Sometimes, when he got the flu, his defenses would weaken and then he could catch glimpses of it. Sometimes it was his childhood home, where his father raged on the other side of his bedroom door. Other times, he'd get a whiff of Mediterranean spices that reminded him of his mother, who he didn't know enough about to recreate.

  But they were brief and never as vivid as this.

  This was the sort of thing that happened to Rose, whose defenses were so weak he regularly fainted near cemeteries as a child.

  He didn't think he was dead, though he wasn't sure how he would know. But again, there was no reason for Istanbul or Amanda Long if someone was trying to siphon off information from him.

  "Let's pretend," Israel said, his eyes still on the clouds of ash pouring from the other side of the Bosphorus, "for all intents and purposes, that you are here, and that the void has invaded my dreams."

  "Okay." Amanda floated downward, and sat next to him.

  "Who is Woodmansey?"

  Amanda stiffened. "How do you know about Woodmansey?"

  "A woman tried to kill me in Milwaukee before I went to dig you up, and all I got was that the person who paid her was named Woodmansey. Your husband said the name was in your phone."

  "Woodmansey's not his name. I don't know his name."

  "I don't care. Who is he?"

  "He's a middleman. Before I had cancer, I paid to get information about Derek to expose him. The name I was given to deposit funds under was for a person named Woodmansey."

  "Which bank?"

  "First National in Chicago."

  Before he could ask more questions, the alarm on his phone tore through his consciousness.

  Chapter Nine

  Charles had disappeared, and George did not know enough to find him. He debated calling Jaime LaFleur but decided against it until he could clear his head.

  His head hurt from the blow Charles had given him, and the thought of staying in a hotel when dealing with Izzy's ghost was too much for him, so he composed himself as best he could and thought of next steps. He needed to rest and regroup. But the supposed rivalry between Jaime and Charles unnerved him, and his gut told him he needed to go somewhere neither would look just in case one thought he knew more than he should. He drove to the airport and took the first flight he could to Chicago.

  George had been to Izzy's flat once. George had been bleeding pretty badly, and his memory was fairly hazy, but he remembered it overlooked the Wrigley Field. Everything else, aside from the large cut in his thigh, and bullet in his right arm was vague and heavily distorted with distant memories of pain.

  The smash and grab job: someone had sold them out. That much was evident. Izzy said he had taken care of it, but George couldn't honestly remember if he checked to see if that was a dream or not. He remembered lying in Izzy's bed, drifting in and out of consciousness, fighting the nightmares that came with being ripped out of the void without having a chance to rebuild a wall.

  He had a blurry recollection of Izzy coming back, unzipping his jacket to reveal dark bruises underneath his pinstriped dress shirt. He had said something about flying to Milwaukee, but George had always dismissed that as some sort of fever dream.

  Whatever happened, it was a mess.

  But Izzy wasn't there to take care of the mess George was in now because Izzy was dead, and it made George's insides feel like they were hardening to stone.

  George was not surprised to find, when he got to the building, that the elevator to Izzy's loft required a key to get to his floor. He considered picking the lock, but knew there was a camera somewhere in there. Instead, he walked out to the concierge desk, and put on his most charming smile, and poshest accent.

  "I'm trying to go up and see my friend," he stopped for a moment, trying to remember Izzy's aliases. What was Izzy's name in Chicago? Christopher? Mark? No. Christopher. "Christopher Levine."

  "Your name?"

  George broadened his smile. "George Rose."

  The concierge, an older man in his late 50s with an indistinct cultural background, did not appear as disarmed as George had hoped he would be. He turned his attention to the computer and ignored George altogether, his fingers slowly clicking on the keyboard.

  "What's your name again?" he asked, something that George nearly mistook for suspicion.

  "Rose. George." With a casualness that his tense body and overwrought mind did not feel, he turned around languished against the counter, his elbows resting on the edge.

  "ID?"

  George showed it to him, his face staring grimly next to his name and eye color.

  "Okay." The man grabbed for a set of keys under the desk. "Would you like to pick up the mail, too? It's been piling up for a few days."

  Only a few days? Had Izzy been here just before he went to DC? George nodded and took it.

  He led George to the elevator, their footsteps echoing against the black and white checkered marble of the entranceway. The stood in the elevator in silence, and George impatiently watched the numbers go up. "I'll take you up."

  "I can take it from here," George said, holding out his hand. The man took it and they shook. "Thanks for your help."

  When the door dinged closed, George slowly made his way down the hall, the morning quiet further muffled by the deep red carpeting. Gold wallpaper lined the hall, and George wondered how Izzy got him, bleeding and torn, up to this apartment without arousing suspicion.

  But then again, there were a lot of things Izzy did that he wasn't sure how he did at all. It shouldn't have surprised him that somehow he hacked the camera system with a loop, or whatever it is that the movies said criminals did.

  George should have laughed at how easy it was to get into Izzy's flat. He was an actual criminal. International, at that. And he still didn't know basic things that movies say he ought to… like computer hacking, or martial arts. Truthfully, he was a bit of a letdown.

  The apartment was dark, and smelled faintly of… incense, perhaps. Maybe potpourri? Hell, it could just have been air freshener.

  Izzy must have been there recently. Maybe before he flew out to Washington D.C.

  George tried to imagine the path that Izzy would take in his apartment when he came in. Next to the door was a bowl of keys sitting on the vestibule near a stack of mail. George walked past an ornate coat rack with only one coat on it. It was Izzy's black pea coat, the one he had been wearing the night in the cemetery.

  Without knowing what he was doing, George grabbed for it and brought it up to his nose. It smelt of dirt, sweat, and something else that he couldn't put his finger on.

  George held on to the coat while he moved down the hallway into the open area. The tables didn't have any dust on them, and there were two dishes that had long since dried on the rack next to the sink. He followed the steps he imagined Izzy would take and opened the refrigerator. It was largely empty, but there was a half-drunk bottle of Reisling. He picked it up. The brand was Pacific Rim.

  George laughed. Izzy preferred ten-dollar wine over what he obviously could afford. After all, he was in a flat that probably cost Izzy a fortune, with hardwood floors that felt… bloody hell, were they heated? Where did Izzy come across this money? Even George, who was fairly good at his job and heavily in demand didn't make money enough to have heated floors on a central Chicago apartment. He was happy with his flat in the suburbs of Los Angeles, thank you very much. Sure, it was a studio, but it came with a gym, hot tubs, and a racquetball court. It was also nowhere near any cemeteries, which was always a plus. But it didn't really matter. He
wasn't there enough to really call it home.

  But Izzy had obviously put a lot of money into this flat and had none left over for good wine.

  George set the bottle on the counter while he searched for a glass. When he started opening cabinets, he couldn't help but wonder if Izzy watched the movie Heat one too many times.

  There were only four plates, four mugs, four bowls… it was as if he thought if he ever had company, it would never be more than three people. Or more likely, he wanted to be able leave quickly if he had to. George finally found the wine glasses over the stove. Stemless, of course. Izzy had always been fashionable.

  George took the tumbler down, and poured himself a glass as the sun started to peek over the horizon. Below him, the city was just waking up, and the streets slowly filled with bumper-to-bumper traffic. Their tail lights glowed, flashing on and off like fireflies, and George wondered how many times Izzy stood in front of this same window staring down at Chicago like a god.

  Reluctantly, he turned away from the window and began retracing imaginary footsteps. Down the hall, he found a bathroom. A toothbrush hung over the edge of the sink, and the soap in the dish had a round groove worn out of the middle. He turned from it, and found a room at the end of the hall.

  No guest room.

  Had he… when he was shot, had he slept in Izzy's bed?

  The thought made his stomach flip flop, and he didn't dare want to consider why it did.

  Over the dark grey duvet of Izzy's bed was a Piet Mondrian piece, though George hardly recognized it as it was an early painting of his. George would have suspected that if Izzy decorated with anything, it would be something clear and concise, like the sharp edge cubes Mondrian would later be famous for. But no, this painting was "The Grey Tree", a heavily impressionistic black stump with its leafless branches spinning geometrically into a grey sky. On the nightstand, was a Silas Marner. It had been left open, its own weight pressing the pages away from the spine.

  George sat down on the edge of the bed. Setting the glass of wine on a coaster on the nightstand, he picked up the book to see where Izzy had been reading.

  Strangely, it read, Marner's face and figure shrank and bent themselves into a constant mechanical relation to the objects of his life.

  It was just as he remembered at school. Hideously boring. How many times had George Eliot's tale of a wronged man with a happy ending put him to sleep? Still, he stared at the passage and reread it. And reread it. And reread it, clutching at with almost the same intensity as he clutched the coat under his arm. Maybe it was the last thing Izzy had ever read.

  He read the passage again, and again, until his eyes could no longer stay open.

  What had Izzy told him? "Go to sleep, Mr. Rose," he had said, but George was having trouble remembering when.

  No Izzy didn't tell him anything. It was his own mind begging him to just close his eyes.

  He took another drink from the stemless glass, kicked off his shoes, and pushed back the covers. Pressing the coat close to face, he smelled Izzy, and sank into a heavy slumber.

  In George's sleep, he could see himself, his eyes sunken, yellowed, and haunted. He stood in a barren but plowed field under and orange sky digging with his hands for something his mind couldn't understand. Whatever drove him was a deep primal fear, and he could hear and see his own labored breathes. The sky around him turned grey as a forest of painted trees grew up along the horizon.

  He kept digging, his hands bleeding, and his face covered in inches of dirt when a hand darted out from the soil and grabbed his own.

  When he tried to cry out, his voice did not come. Trapped by elegant, bony fingers, untouched by filth that surrounded them, he could not move.

  Inch by inch, his body sank deeper into the dirt until he couldn't breathe and there was only suffocating darkness. The painful feeling in his chest told him he was dying.

  He was in two places at once: He was there, experiencing it; he was there, watching it.

  Even though he could see nothing, he made out the figure pulling him down. It edged closer and closer to his face, the dirt shifting away from its eyes. George recognized the person instantly, even with its black eyes, and its black smile that seemed to be oozing oil into the surrounding gloom. His pale skin was stark in the darkness, and George tried to scream out as it came nose to nose with him.

  His eyes shot open, his heart struggled to break through his chest, and sweat seeped out of every pore. The last vestiges of his shouts echoed around Izzy's flat.

  He searched for his face desperately in the mirror across from the bed. The sun was just going down, and it was difficult to see his features in the shadows, but he recognized what he had seen in his dream. His eyes were sunken, and the fear and sweat had made his skin sag as if he had gained fifteen years.

  Then, clear as day, he saw Izzy in the corner of the mirror, walking past the bedroom doorway. He wasn't the zombie-like creature that he had seen in the dream, with patches of his hair falling off. He looked just like he had on the street corner Browning and Vine, his brow serious and furrowed, his eyes determined and distant behind large, dark glasses.

  George screamed again, and smashed the stemless wine glass into the mirror. It shattered in so many places that the only thing he could see was his face broken into small bits, moving up and down as he tried to breathe.

  Madness, he thought, thy name is George Rose.

  The Blue Job

  Eight Years Earlier

  The first time Israel Leventhal met George Rose, he didn't like him. He smoked too much and had a penchant for calling everyone his mate. It was too friendly, and Israel suspected it was fake. Still, the man was a deathmask, and one of the best supposedly, so Israel sucked it up and tried to feel honored that Rose deigned to work with him.

  Their first job together was an easy one, and Israel could never figure out why Rose had accepted it. Surely, at that stage in his career, he would want more money. But no, he took a job with the nineteen-year-old Israel, and Israel was convinced it was to make fun of him.

  "You know, you don't have to be serious all the time, love," Rose commented as he picked the lock of the backroom in the funeral parlor.

  "We kill for a living." Israel looked about nervously, afraid that someone would come in early. "Of course I'm serious."

  "All the reason you shouldn't be. No sense going home and crying about it in your flat alone. No sense in it at all. Instead, you do the dirty work, find some joy in it and spend all your money on DVDs and marijuana."

  "That's seriously what you spend your money on?"

  "No. Usually a decent bitter and a trip somewhere warm. Very fond of the Bahamas, me."

  "Well, this must be hell for you."

  "What, Wisconsin? I love Wisconsin. Sure, it's cold, but it's not Canada. You have to look on the bright side of things. Plus, there is the cheese." He grinned as the door swung open and stood up. "I mean it is unnaturally orange, but the people are still nice in spite of it. You are a gravedigger, for god's sake. You'll die before you're thirty if you frown every time you have to talk to every two bit drug dealer who stole from their boss. Feeling sorry for them will kill you faster than anything else."

  "Bright side, huh? How many times have you been to Wisconsin?"

  "This is my first time, actually. It's a bit cold, but the locals say there is actually a summer here. I may believe them after a few pints."

  Israel thought that George Rose liked to talk out of his ass a lot. This was serious business. Sure, Israel was nineteen, and new to the world, but surely the job deserved some amount of gravitas.

  Rose, however, didn't seem to feel that way.

  "Right, let's get this over with." Rose made his way over to a coffin, and lifted it to reveal a young, dark-haired woman. She had died in a car accident, and the trauma had left so much of her body bruised that the pale cover up barely covered it though it was caked on. The damage of the accident necessitated two gravediggers to piece her together in the
void.

  Rose took point, and fell into the void like he was taking a swan dive into a lake. Israel just barely grabbed his hand in time and dove in after. The void stretched out all around them, and Izzy felt like he was lazily floating along on the waves while Rose reached under the surface trying to find the girl. Entering the void had never felt so gentle, or effortless to Israel before.

  When Rose pulled her up, he smiled sweetly and said, "Hello, love."

  "Who are you?"

  "An angel." Israel had to roll his eyes when Rose said that. Whatever his talents were in the void, acting natural was not one of them.

  "I didn't know angels were black," she said, her eyebrows set quizzically.

  Rose raised his own eyebrows in return and glanced at Israel with an amused grin on his face. "Why not? Jesus was black. Angels can be, too."

  "Rose…" Israel growled, but he ignored him. He wasn't even trying to act.

  "Jesus wasn't black," she stated matter-of-factly. "He the whitest bro with a beard you'll ever see. Besides, you don't have wings."

  "Would you like wings?"

  "I think so. Yeah."

  And that was when Israel had found out why George Rose had the name in the business that he did. Shooting out from his back was what seemed like thousands of wings with red coloring fanning into iridescent blues and greens along the tips. It reminded him of his uncle's Macaw who used to curse at anyone who walked by.

  "How's that?" he asked.

  "Shouldn't we be asking her…" Israel started, but Rose held up his hand to silence him.

  "Very nice," she complimented Rose, smiling.

  "So, I'm about to take you to a place far better than here, but I first need to know something." Almost imperceptibly, she nodded her head. "Do you remember what hit you?"

  The girl closed her eyes. "It was blue. That was all I saw."

  "Was it a car? A truck? An SUV?"

  "A... truck." The girl reopened her eyes. "These are funny questions for an angel. Shouldn't you be asking if I was good in life?"

  "No, darling. I know that you weren't."