The Immortalists

by Chloe Benjamin

  “Thank you,” said Daniel. When the bartender left, he turned to Eddie. “How did you meet her?”

  “I was on duty in San Francisco. Your mother called us—she said your brother was a runaway, and she asked us to pick him up. This was, what, a dozen years ago? He couldn’t have been older than sixteen. I roughed him up; I shouldn’t have. I don’t think your sister ever forgave me. Even so, she woke me up. When I saw her outside the station, with her hair blowing back and those boots on, I thought she was the most gorgeous woman I’d ever seen. Not just because she was beautiful, but because she was powerful. So I remembered her.”

  Eddie finished his beer, wiped the froth off his mouth.

  “Couple years later I came across a flier with her face on it,” he said, “and I started to go see her perform. The first time must have been early ’83; I’d had a god-awful day, bunch of junkies killed each other in the Tenderloin, and when I sat down to watch her I felt—transported. One night, I told her so. How she’d helped me. How her show had made me different. It took months to work up the courage. But she wanted nothing to do with me.”

  The bartender returned with their drinks. Daniel gulped. He had no idea how to respond to Eddie’s revelations, which were intimate enough to make him uncomfortable. All the same, they numbed his despair: as long as Eddie talked, his sister was suspended in the room.

  “I’ll be honest with you,” Eddie said. “I was not in good shape. My dad had just passed, and I was drinking too much. I knew I had to get out of San Francisco, so I applied for the bureau. Straight out of Quantico, they had me in Vegas working on mortgage fraud. When I passed the Mirage and saw Klara’s face on the sign, I just about thought I’d gone crazy. Next day, I see her in the parking lot at Vons. I’m driving an Oldsmobile, and she’s on the curb with a baby.”

  “Ruby.”

  “That her name? Cute kid, even when she was screaming. Your sister ran; I must’ve scared her. I didn’t mean to. Soon as I saw her, I wanted to talk to her. So I decided I’d go to her opening. I’d stay afterward, I figured, and make sure we were clear. No hard feelings. Nothing for her to be nervous about.”

  They stared straight ahead. It was the gift of parallel bar seating, Daniel thought: that you could have a conversation without ever looking the other person in the eye.

  “Night before, I couldn’t sleep. I get to the Mirage early. I’m pacing outside the theater when I see the three of them come in, Klara and her man and the baby,” said Eddie. “She’s arguing with the guy—I can see it from a mile away. When he goes into the theater, she takes the baby in the elevator. The elevators are glass, so I get in the one beside her: keep my head down, watch to see where she gets off. She dropped the baby at a day care on seventeen before she rode up to forty-five. She didn’t seem to know where she was going until a maid came out of the penthouse suite. When the maid left, Klara slipped in.”

  Daniel was grateful for the dimness of the bar and the liquor, grateful that there were places one could go at one in the afternoon for darkness. The beard he’d just started to grow was salty with tears.

  “Friday night,” Eddie said, “and everyone was out. I’d never heard Vegas so quiet. And here’s what you learn, being a cop: peaceful is nice, so’s quiet, but if it goes on too long it’s not peace and quiet. I ran down the hall and I knocked on the door. ‘Ma’am,’ I shout. ‘Miss Gold.’ But there’s no answer. So I got a key from the front desk and I went back up.” He drank until his beer was finished. “I shouldn’t say any more.”

  “It’s all right,” said Daniel. He had already lost her. What he heard now would make little difference.

  “At first, I didn’t know what I was seeing. I thought she was practicing. She was strung up on the rope, like in her show; she was spinning, just barely; but the bit hung off beside her jaw. I laid my hands on her. I wanted to heal her. I tried to breathe into her mouth.”

  Daniel was wrong. What he heard did make a difference. “That’s enough.”

  “I’m sorry.” In the dark, Eddie’s pupils were oversized, gleaming. “She didn’t deserve it.”

  Elvis’s “Love Me Tender” came on the jukebox. Daniel gripped his glass.

  “So how did you get the case?” he asked.

  “I was the one who found her. That counted for something. And then I argued. Major murder cases, crimes that cross state boundaries, kidnappings—those are all under the jurisdiction of the FBI, not the police. Sure, it looked like a suicide, but my radar was up and something was off. I knew they’d crossed state lines. I knew she’d been stealing. And I knew I had a funny feeling about Chapal.”

  “Raj,” said Daniel, startled. “You suspect him?”

  “I’m an agent. I suspect everyone. Do you?”

  Daniel paused. “I barely knew him. I do think he was controlling. He didn’t like for her to stay in touch with us.” He squeezed his eyes shut. It was horrible, this use of the past tense.

  “I’ll look into it,” Eddie said. “You have any other suspicions?”

  Daniel wished he had other suspicions. He wanted a reason, but all he had was a coincidence. When Simon died, Daniel had not thought of the woman on Hester Street. His death was so shocking as to erase all other thoughts from Daniel’s mind, and after all, Simon had never shared his prophecy. But Daniel remembered Klara’s: the woman had said she’d die at thirty-one. And that was exactly the age she had been.

  “There’s only one thing I can think of,” he said. “It’s horseshit. But it’s strange.”

  Eddie lifted his hands. “No judgment.”

  Pain ricocheted in Daniel’s skull. He wasn’t sure whether it was the alcohol or the impending disclosure, which he had not even made to Mira. When he finished telling Eddie about the woman on Hester Street—her reputation and their visit, the timing of Klara’s death—Eddie frowned. He’d look into it, he said, but Daniel didn’t have much hope. He sensed he’d disappointed the agent—that Eddie wanted secrets or conflict, not the childhood memory of a traveling psychic.

  Six months later, when Klara’s death was ruled a suicide, Daniel was not surprised. It was the simplest hypothesis, and the simplest hypothesis, he’d learned, was usually right. His advisor in medical school had been a student of Dr. Theodore Woodward and liked to quote what Woodward told his medical interns: “When you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras.”

  • • •

  Fourteen years later and ten states east, Daniel enters the Hoffman House to meet Eddie again. The Hoffman was a fortification and lookout during the Revolutionary War; now it serves burgers and beer. Aside from its architecture—Dutch rubble construction, white shutters, low ceilings, and wide-planked wood floors—the only reminder of the Hoffman’s history is the annual arrival of war enthusiasts, who come to reenact the British Burning of Kingston.

  At first, Daniel was intrigued by the reenactors. He was certainly impressed by their attention to detail. They make their costumes by hand, based on original documents and paintings, and carry their weapons in white linen haversacks. But they grate on him now: the women bustling around in petticoats and white bonnets, the men scrambling with fake muskets like actors run amok from a community theater. The cannons still make him jump. What’s more, the premise annoys him. Why rehearse the drama of a war long past when there’s one in the present? The reenactors’ determination to live in a different time unnerves him. It reminds him of Klara.

  Today, at the Hoffman, there is only Eddie O’Donoghue. He sits in a wooden booth beside the fireplace, nursing a beer. Across from him is a glass of untouched bourbon.

  “Woodford Reserve,” Eddie says. “Hope that’s all right.”

  Daniel clasps Eddie’s hand. “Good memory.”

  “That’s what they pay me for. It’s good to see you.”

  They look at each other: Daniel and Eddie, Eddie and Daniel. Like Eddie, Daniel is at least twenty poun
ds heavier than he was in 1991. Like Daniel, Eddie must be nearly fifty, if he isn’t fifty already. Daniel’s eyebrows sprawl like intrepid explorers, so fast growing that Mira bought him an industrial trimmer for Hanukkah; Eddie’s face has softened and swelled, like a hangdog, around the jaw. But his eyes, like Daniel’s, are bright with recognition. Daniel is nervous—he can only imagine that something new has emerged in Klara’s case—but he’s glad to see Eddie, who feels like a friend.

  “Appreciate you taking off work to meet with me,” Eddie says, and Daniel does not correct him. “I won’t keep you waiting.”

  Daniel is conscious of his worn jeans and sweater, the latter a decade-old gift from Mira. Eddie wears a dress shirt and slacks, a sport coat thrown over the back of the booth. He lifts a black briefcase from the bench, sets it on the table, and unlatches it. Out comes a notebook and folder, also black. Eddie removes a sheet of paper and turns it toward Daniel.

  “Any of these people look familiar to you?”

  On the page are at least twelve photocopied photos. Daniel reaches into his jacket pocket for his glasses. Most are mug shots, small squares within which a variety of dark-haired, dark-eyed people scowl or glare, though a couple of teenagers grin, and one young man flashes the peace sign. Below the mug shots are three photos of a heavyset, white-haired woman. They look like security shots taken in the vestibule of a building.

  “I don’t think so. Who are they?”

  “The Costellos,” says Eddie. “This woman here?” He points to the first mug shot, which shows a woman perhaps in her seventies. Her hair is waved like that of a 1940s movie star, her eyes heavy lidded and cool. “That’s Rosa. She’s the matriarch. This is her husband, Donnie; these two are her sisters. This row is her children—she’s got five—and below are their children: that’s nine more. Eighteen people in all. Eighteen people running the most sophisticated fortune-telling fraud in U.S. history.”

  “Fortune-telling fraud?”

  “That’s right.” Eddie folds his hands and leans back for effect. “Now, fortune-telling is notoriously difficult to prosecute. It’s banned in some parts of the country, but those bans are rarely enforced. After all, we’ve got people who predict what the stock market is going to do. We’ve got people who predict the weather and get paid for it. Hell, there are horoscopes in every newspaper. What’s more, it’s a cultural issue. These people, they’re what’s called the Rom, the Romani; you might know them as Gypsies. They ran from the Mongols and the Europeans and the Nazis. Historically, they’re poor, they’re underserved. They don’t go to school—they’re bred for fortune-telling since birth. So when you nab someone on fraud charges, what’s the first thing the defense is gonna do? They’re gonna frame it as a free speech issue. They’re gonna frame it as discrimination. So how’d we do it? How’d we convict the Costellos of fourteen federal crimes?”

  Something sour rises to the base of Daniel’s throat. Eddie doesn’t have information about Klara, he realizes. Eddie has information about the woman on Hester Street.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “How?”

  “I’ll tell you a story about a man we’ll call Jim.” Eddie lowers his voice. “This man Jim had lost a child to cancer. His wife divorced him. His anxiety was through the roof, and he was in constant muscular pain. So you have a really sick guy, a guy who no one in the mainstream medical establishment will deal with because he’s so off-putting, such a pain in the ass, that his relationships with conventional doctors deteriorate—you get a guy like that, it’s no wonder he winds up on the doorstep of someone different, someone who says, ‘I can help you; I can do you good.’ Someone like Rosa Costello.”

  Rosa Costello. Daniel looks at her picture. He knows she isn’t the woman he met in 1969. Her lips are too plump; her face is heart shaped. In a word, she’s prettier. And yet, in his mind, she morphs. Her face assumes the woman’s bullish chin and flat, unaccommodating eyes.

  “So this is how it starts,” Eddie says. “This reader, this Rosa Costello, she goes, ‘I’m gonna sell you a candle for fifty dollars, and I’m gonna burn it for you and say this prayer, and you’re gonna notice a difference in your nerves.’ And when Jim doesn’t notice a difference, she goes, ‘Okay, so we gotta do more. Let me sell you these leaves, spiritual leaves, and we’re gonna burn these and say a different prayer.’ Fast-forward two years and this man has undergone several healing rituals and two very dramatic sacrifices the sum total of which is somewhere in the vicinity of forty thousand dollars. Finally, Rosa says, ‘It’s your money that’s the problem, it’s cursed and it’s trouble, so you have to bring me ten thousand more, and we’ll get the hex removed.’ The sum was termed a donation; this family was termed a church. The Church of the Free Spirit, they called themselves.”

  Daniel hadn’t thought he was hungry, but when a waiter appears beside them, he’s ravenous. Eddie orders the tavern wings. Daniel picks the calamari.

  “What you have to understand about these cases,” Eddie continues, once they’re alone, “is that they make prosecutors run like hell. But the Costellos were different. The Costellos were thumbing their noses. When we seized their assets, we found cars, motorcycles, boats, gold jewelry. We found homes on the Intracoastal Waterway. We found fifty million dollars.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Hang on,” says Eddie, raising a hand. “Before the pleas are entered, their defense attorney files a twenty-four-page request for dismissal on the grounds of freedom of religion. They’re their own church, remember? The Church of the goddamn Free Spirit! What’s more, he claims, this is nothing but the most recent example in a long line of Romani persecution. Now, am I saying that all Gypsies are swindlers and crooks? Absolutely not. But we got nine of these ones on grand larceny, false income returns, mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering. We subpoenaed birth records—we wanted to get everyone involved in this thing. There was just one person we couldn’t find.”

  Eddie points to the security shots of the woman in the vestibule. She wears a long brown coat and gray shoes that close with Velcro. Her hands rest on the railing of a revolving door, and her white hair hangs in two long, slender braids.

  “Oh my God,” Daniel says.

  “That your woman?”

  Daniel nods. He sees it now. The broad forehead. The pinched, unfriendly mouth. He remembers watching her mouth as she spelled out his future. He remembers the part of her lips, the wet pink tongue.

  “I want you to look carefully,” Eddie says. “I want you to be sure.”

  “I’m sure.” Daniel exhales. “Who is she?”

  “She’s Rosa’s sister. It could be she’s involved; it could be she isn’t. What we do know is that she seems to be estranged from the rest of the family. You find the Rom living in groups, which is why it’s unusual that your woman works alone. Here’s how she’s typical, though: she’s always traveling. And she’s savvy. She works under a number of aliases. She’s not licensed, which is illegal in most parts of the country, but it also keeps her out of the system.”

  “This family,” says Daniel. “Do they not accept payment in the beginning? Because that’s how it was with us. She didn’t ask, or my brother didn’t give it to her. And I’ve always found that strange.”

  Eddie laughs. “Do they accept payment? They accepted all the payment they could get. Maybe this woman went easy on you ’cause you were kids.”

  “But if that were true, then why would she have said such hideous things? Klara was nine. I was eleven, and she still scared me shitless. The only thing I’ve been able to come up with is that she used fear to hook her customers—like the worse she scares them, the more likely they are to come back. To become dependent.”

  When he was a medical resident in Chicago, Daniel shadowed a doctor who used similar techniques: insisting that someone’s depression could not be managed without regular visits, or telling an obese patient he’d die without surgery.<
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  “Or it doesn’t matter what she says, because she’s already cornered the market. Romani fortune-telling is usually very formulaic: they talk about your love life, your money, your job. Giving you a date of death? That’s ballsy. It’s shrewd. The Rom do a couple other things—the men lay pavement, sell used cars, they do body and fender work—but even if the world stops producing pavement, even if we stop using cars, what’s the one thing that’ll be around as long as human beings? Our desire to know. And we’ll pay anything for it. The Rom have been telling fortunes for hundreds of years with an equal amount of economic success. But your woman goes a step further. If she’s telling you when you’ll die, she’s offering a service that even the other Rom don’t. She has no competition.”

  The fireplace is making Daniel sweat. He pulls off his sweater, tugging down the polo shirt beneath. It occurs to him that he hasn’t told Mira where he is, and that he’s supposed to meet her at temple at six. But he can’t leave, not now, not even to write her one of the text messages he’s finally figured out how to send.

  “What else do you know about them?” he asks as the waiter arrives with their food.

  Eddie drags a wing through a glop of electric-orange sauce, then dunks it in thick ranch dressing. “About the Costellos? They came to Florida from Italy in the thirties. Probably they were running from Hitler. Like all of the Rom, they’re very private. When they’re not with customers, they speak their own language; they don’t even try to assimilate. They need the gazhe for money—that’s the non-Rom, like us—but they also think we’re polluted.” He wipes his mouth. “It’s the women who tell fortunes. They see it as a gift from God. But because the women interact with the gazhe, the Rom think the women are polluted, too. They’re very obsessive about cleanliness, purity. You go into a Romani house, it’s gonna be spotless.”

  “But the woman I saw—her place was cluttered. I’d almost call it filthy.” Daniel frowns. “Did you ask the family about her?”