Don't Ever Get Old

by Daniel Friedman

  “St. Louis?” I interrupted him. “Ziegler was living in St. Louis?”

  “Yeah,” said Silver. “Perfect place for him. I think they hate Jews there more than anywhere in America.”

  Silver’s clever plan to find evidence: he broke into Ziegler’s house, tripped an alarm, and got himself arrested. The same people who had ignored all the evidence that Ziegler was a bloodthirsty war criminal were eager to book Silver for burglary.

  “Anti-Semites.” This was punctuated with a loud thump, maybe Silver slamming his fist up against something. “Fifteen years working to end bigotry, and those Jew haters tried to lock me up.”

  Of course, our boy was too clever for that. He posted bail and promptly fled, exercising his right to return to his people’s eternal homeland.

  “Thank God there’s one place left in the world where Jews can find sanctuary from persecution.”

  What an asshole. “That’s clearly His intended use for it,” I said.

  “Now I have a good job with the Israeli government. In a Jewish country, where there’s no bigotry, my kind of talent gets a proper measure of appreciation.”

  “What kind of talent?” I asked. “What do you do for the Israeli government?”

  Silence on the line. I lit one of my Lucky Strikes.

  “We’d really like to see your file on Ziegler,” said Tequila.

  “It’s a waste of time.”

  And we were back to that again. I’d heard about enough of it.

  “Oh, stow it, the both of you,” I growled into the phone.

  They stopped talking. I took a bite out of my apple and kept the receiver in front of my mouth so they could hear me chewing.

  “Riesling, if you’re ever going to be much of a lawyer, you’re going to have to learn how to talk to someone who doesn’t want to give you information.”

  “My name is Tequila,” said Tequila. “And why wouldn’t he want to give us information? Don’t we all want the same thing here?”

  “Of course we want the same thing,” I said. “And this goof figures if we get it, then he can’t steal it.”

  “You’re talking about Ziegler’s supposed stolen Nazi treasure,” said Silver.

  I made a phlegmy, vaguely sarcastic sound. “Well, I’m glad somebody finally mentioned it, not that I don’t enjoy sitting around yanking on my putz as much as the next guy.”

  “I didn’t want to say anything about that, because I thought we were playing it close to the vest. I wasn’t sure if he knew about it,” said Tequila. It was downright unseemly for a grown man to go around whimpering like a kicked dog. The sound of his voice was like a razor blade scraping against the grain of my skin, and I hated him a little bit right then.

  “Don’t be a damn fool,” I said. “Money is never a secret. Everybody always knows about it. This jackass has known about that gold at least as long as he’s known about Heinrich Ziegler.”

  “What do you mean?” Tequila asked.

  “He never pushed for action on Ziegler when he was at the Wiesenthal Center. In fact, I’d bet he stole the file from their offices when he left, to make sure nobody there ever did anything with that information he doesn’t want to give us. Most likely, he spiked the investigation so he could chase after the gold. Why do you think he really broke into that house?”

  “I was seeking evidence,” Silver said, proud and defiant and so full of shit that his eyes were probably brown.

  “You thought you could bust in there and steal all that loot, and Ziegler wouldn’t be able to call the authorities for help, because he was a fugitive.” I paused to take a drag on my cigarette. “But you got pinched anyway, because despite all your supposed talent, you’re just about the worst thief I’ve ever heard of.”

  “Now, I resent that. I won’t have you make me a villain in this. I went after a perpetrator of atrocities, and as thanks for the trouble, I was treated like a criminal myself. I am, if anything, a victim. A victim of hate crimes.”

  I cut him off. “Didn’t I already tell you to shut up? I don’t like repeating myself over and over again. And if I have to hear you whine about anti-Semitism one more time, I am hopping on the next plane to Jerusalem, and do you know what I am going to do when I get there?”

  He didn’t say anything, so I went ahead and told him:

  “I am going to stick a prayer in the Wailing Wall asking God for peace and good health, and then I will go to your house and punch your teeth down your throat. Let me tell you, you’re the reason there’s anti-Semitism.”

  “Mr. Schatz, I don’t think I have to listen to this anymore,” said Avram Silver.

  “Then don’t. I had my morning coffee about an hour ago, and I’m looking forward to a nice bowel movement pretty soon. I don’t want you spoiling it.”

  “To hell with you, Mr. Schatz.”

  “I’d take even money that you get there first,” I told him.

  I heard a click as he hung up.

  “Why did you do that, Grandpa?” Tequila shouted at me. “Now he’ll never give us that dossier.”

  “We don’t need him.”

  “Of course we do. He’s got the name Ziegler’s using, and he was the only lead we had on that. How are we going to find your Nazi now?”

  “We don’t need that silly crook. We don’t need his information. We don’t need his damn dossier.”

  Tequila was quiet for a moment. “Why not?”

  I took a bite out of my apple.

  “Silver told us he got arrested for breaking into Ziegler’s house in St. Louis. So we pull the police report, we get the address, the victim’s name.”

  “We get Ziegler,” Tequila said. “We don’t need his damn dossier.” He didn’t say anything for a moment. And then: “I can come home to visit for a few days. I’ve got a frequent-flier ticket to use. If you’re going to St. Louis, I can drive you there.”

  “My heart leaps with joy,” I said. “I’m going to have myself a crap.”

  “You have a good time, Grandpa.”

  “I intend to. Best part of my morning.”

  8

  Since the funeral, Emily Feely had been calling the house, talking about wanting to have dinner with us, and Rose decided to accept the invitation.

  While they were talking on the phone, I was complaining that it was too far for us to drive, apparently loud enough for Emily to hear on the other end of the line. She offered to bring everything to our house. Rose said that sounded lovely. More or less, I was cornered like an animal. Norris had trapped me somehow.

  “I don’t like those people,” I protested as I sprinkled Sweet’N Low over a bowl of raisin bran. “Did you see how Norris talked to us?”

  “You fight with everybody, Buck. That’s why we don’t have any friends left.”

  “That suits me fine.”

  “Well, it doesn’t suit me. I’m bored and lonely. And Emily seems like such a nice person, and she wants to be close with people who were close to her father.”

  “Her father was a schmuck,” I said.

  “We’re the only people who showed up at the funeral.”

  I pounded my fist on the breakfast table. “But I didn’t want to go,” I told her. “And I can’t stand that bloated louse of a husband she has.”

  “I’m sure that you and Norris can patch things up and get along.”

  “You said yourself, he’s a dangerous character.”

  She crossed her arms. “And you laughed and said you could handle him.”

  “False bravado. I’m terrified of that guy.”

  “Then it’s a good idea to make nice with him,” Rose said.

  “I’m putting my foot down on this.”

  She smiled, and her eyes were filled with genuine pity. She knew I would never win. “You can spend all day putting your foot down if you’d like,” she said. “But they’ll be here at six sharp, and you need to wear something nice.”

  I growled at her through a mouthful of cereal.

  “Oh, by the way, Emil
y is going to invite that preacher from their church. You two seemed to get on well, so I thought you would enjoy seeing him again.”

  “Oh, goddamn it,” I said.

  Tequila landed at Memphis International Airport later that afternoon and came over to the house in his mother’s little Japanese car, just ahead of the other guests.

  “Hey, Grandma. Hey, Pop,” he said as he tromped into the house, letting the screen door slam behind him.

  Billy was a little on the short side, with thick, sandy hair he wore in that messy style the young people like. Not a bad-looking kid, but it wouldn’t hurt for him to lose ten or twenty pounds and stand up straight once in a while. He resembled his father, and he maybe looked a little like I used to look once upon a time, except I was in better shape at his age. He usually dressed sloppy, in blue jeans and T-shirts and zip-up hooded sweatshirts. Despite his deficiencies, I was glad he was there. Maybe because he was family, I disliked him less than most other people.

  Norris and Emily showed up a bit later with a bunch of food in Tupperware containers and covered casserole trays. I would never eat anything they gave me under any circumstances.

  “Buck, it’s so good to see you,” said Emily. And she hugged me. She didn’t have any visible mucus on her, but I tried not to breathe until she’d backed away to a safe distance. “I can’t thank you enough for being such a comfort to me and Dad.”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said. “This is my grandson, William.”

  Tequila stuck out his hand, and Feely shook it. “Call me Tequila. Everyone does.”

  “Oy,” I muttered.

  Lawrence Kind arrived late. Tequila and I met him at the door.

  “I brought you this,” he said, and he handed me an ashtray.

  I allowed myself a chuckle, and I barely even flinched when he touched my shoulder with his hand; barely even recoiled when his lips peeled back off of his slimy gums. I had not expected the spiritual doctor to have a sense of humor.

  “Larry, this is my grandson, Mojito. Mojito lives in New York City, where he spends the money he inherited from my late son.”

  “Good to know you, uh, Mojito,” said the preacher.

  “It’s Tequila,” said Tequila. “It’s a fraternity nickname that kind of stuck.”

  “Of course,” said Kind.

  “Dr. Kind delivered the soul of my dear friend Jim Wallace unto the bosom of the Good Lord Jesus Christ,” I told Tequila.

  “I’m sure he appreciated that,” Tequila said.

  Kind gave one of his bounteous smiles to Tequila and then fixed his eyes on a point somewhere behind me.

  “Good to see you again, Norris,” he said.

  I turned around and was surprised to find Feely standing there. Used to be, I was tough to sneak up on, but I’d been having some trouble with my hearing. For some reason, the outside parts of my ears had grown bigger and fleshier, while the inner workings had dramatically scaled back operations. A tangle of bristly hairs had grown in the ear canals, like weeds sprouting in the ruin of an abandoned building.

  “Eat shit and die,” Feely told Kind. His eyes were narrowed to little slits, and he was baring his teeth like an angry Chihuahua. I supposed he was trying to be menacing, but since he was basically just a marshmallow covered in hair, he only managed to look a little constipated.

  Tequila cocked a questioning eyebrow at me. I shrugged back at him. I had no idea what that was about.

  “Buck, I think I’m going to go see how Emily is doing,” Kind said, and he turned his back on Feely and walked toward the sound of Rose and Emily chatting in the kitchen.

  I started to follow him, but Feely grabbed my arm. I wondered what they taught in that church that made these people think it was okay to touch me.

  “Can we talk in front of him?” he asked, jerking his head in my grandson’s direction. There were little beads of sweat on his forehead and on his upper lip.

  I squeezed the bridge of my nose. “Norris, you and I don’t share any secrets.”

  “All right. All right,” he said, his eyes flicking toward Tequila, who was chewing the insides of his face, trying not to laugh.

  “You know why that rat-bastard preacher is here, right?” Feely asked me, lowering his voice to a rough whisper.

  “Probably because your wife invited him,” I said.

  “He’s after our treasure, just like I told you. This proves it.”

  “Norris, there’s no treasure, and there’s no us.”

  But Norris didn’t seem to hear me. His shiny pink cheeks were quivering with rage. “Emily inherited Jim’s share, fair and square. We’re going to have to do something about Lawrence Kind.”

  “Jim doesn’t have a share,” Tequila interjected. “He took a bribe and let a war criminal escape.”

  “You told him?” Feely slapped a hand against his forehead, which made a sound like creamed corn splattering on a linoleum floor. Then his face screwed up again to show how angry he was, and he jabbed a fat finger into my chest. “Whatever he gets comes out of your cut, Buck.”

  I mustered the best snarl I could twist my own sagging jowls into and poked a finger right back at him.

  “Norris, I expect you to go apologize to the reverend, and behave yourself in a way that doesn’t ruin this evening for Rose,” I told him. “You and Kind can settle up how to divide Jim’s piece of nothing on your own time, but don’t waste any more of mine. I don’t want any part of your delusional fantasies.”

  “Well, if that’s the way it is, I damn well intend to settle things with that son of a bitch, and with you as well, if you’re throwing in with him.” Feely turned and stomped off toward the kitchen.

  “Grandpa, you’ve got some weird-ass friends,” said Tequila.

  “And you don’t know when to keep your stupid mouth shut,” I told him.

  Rose remained unaware of the tension between Kind and Feely as best I could tell, and the dinner was civil, although the conversation was strained and a little awkward.

  Norris and Emily had brought over some kind of meat roast with gravy. I found a hair on my portion, and I didn’t eat any.

  I got rid of everyone a little before nine, explaining that old people had to go to bed early. After the guests left, I made an Oscar Mayer bologna sandwich, on rye bread with mustard and some iceberg lettuce. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

  9

  The next morning, I woke up feeling kind of unsettled. The malaise was familiar. It was my cop early-warning system, the low rumbling growl my watchdog instinct sent reverberating through my brain stem to let me know somebody nasty was looking for me and planning to make trouble. Rose read some kind of psychology book once and told me that this was my subconscious mind perceiving associations between things I hadn’t consciously connected yet. I never paid much attention to that stuff, but it sounded like the kind of thing that might be true.

  I hadn’t had that feeling in thirty years, though, and it scared me. I wasn’t concerned particularly about Norris Feely or Lawrence Kind or Avram Silver; I was mostly just scared about the implications of the tingling at the base of my skull. Paranoia was one of the early symptoms of senile dementia.

  I figured a walk on the treadmill would clear my head. But somewhere between the house and the Jewish Community Center, I started getting real suspicious of a red Honda trailing four car lengths behind me.

  Sunlight was reflecting off my shadow’s windshield, so I couldn’t see the driver.

  I turned left. So did he.

  I changed lanes, and he did as well.

  I swallowed hard, wondering what I had stirred up by calling that Israeli. Probably nothing; this probably meant nothing.

  It was all in my head.

  A couple of weeks previous, I’d had an unpleasant talk with my doctor. He was clutching a folder full of test results and giving me that thin-lipped, scrunched-eyebrow look medical folks get when they’re giving you the bad news. He was just a kid, in his early forties, but he’d been taking care of us for about f
ive years, since our old doctor retired to Boca Raton and dropped dead on a golf course from some kind of massive embolism. I guessed the new guy was doing a good enough job; Rose and I were still breathing.

  “Buck, I can put you on a medication to try and improve these memory problems you’ve been having, but I don’t necessarily think that’s a good idea.”

  I tugged at my shirt. “You think I have Alzheimer’s, don’t you.”

  His lips curled downward in his best compassionate frown. “No. Many older patients have some confusion, some memory loss. There are a number of factors that can contribute to these difficulties.”

  “How long have I got before I turn into one of those zombies, staggering around a nursing home with no pants on?”

  I’d gone for a consultation with a neurologist after an embarrassing episode; I’d been driving in my car, and I realized I didn’t know where I was and couldn’t remember where I was going. I pulled into a parking lot and called Rose from a pay phone. She had asked me why I didn’t call on my cellular. I’d forgotten I had one.

  “Your neurological tests don’t show sufficient impairment to meet a clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer’s-type dementia. You may have what we refer to as mild cognitive impairment, but it’s difficult to make that kind of distinction in some patients.”

  “So you’re telling me you don’t know whether it’s Alzheimer’s?”

  He avoided looking at me, kept his eyes fixed on the chart. “I’ve conferred with the neurologist. Your MRI shows no visible lesions on your brain, and my assessment is that you’re still pretty sharp for a man your age. Nonetheless, your test results may indicate a pre-Alzheimer’s state that we would ordinarily combat with an aggressive drug regimen in a younger patient.”

  Over the years, I had dealt with my share of doctors and lawyers and car mechanics. They always started talking technical when they were trying to put something by me.

  “Younger than what?”

  “Buck, my goal as a provider of medical care to the elderly is to try to provide the maximum number of quality life years to my patients. Do you understand what that means?”