“Goon.”
“He dropped me off and I went up, and the door was open. I—”
Infante broke his silence. “What time is this?”
“You know the time. I told you half a doz—”
“Tell us once more.”
“About two and a half hours ago,” she said. “What time is it now?”
Without looking at his watch the shaggy detective said, “Twenty to six.”
“Three hours, then.”
“And you didn’t go out again?”
“How could I, with Nathan …?”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” she said. “Why is this so important to you?”
“Not to me. We’ve been talking to someone, a jogger, who saw you go in. He said he noticed you because he never sees a woman alone on the street at that hour. He told us he’d stretched a hamstring and was still working out the kinks when the first cars arrived. He watched for a while and then went back home. He just came out again.”
“So?” Kate asked.
“So, he didn’t hear a gunshot and no one else we’ve spoken to did either. And since Mr. Metrevelli appears to have died a while before that time and we haven’t found a gun …What I’m saying is, we have to buy your story.”
“Does that mean I can go to bed now?”
“Soon,” the detective said. “We want you downtown.”
“No,” Kate yelled at him. “I won’t let you lock me up. I want to see a lawyer.”
“Who said anything about …? We need you to take a gunshot-residue test.”
“What’s that?”
“To help determine if you’ve fired a gun recently.”
Kate laughed bitterly. “I wouldn’t know how to hold one.”
“If you test negative, you have nothing to worry about.”
“But I am worried,” she said. The detective stopped rubbing his fingers. “I’m worried about everything.”
“Can I get a word in here?” Infante asked. “I don’t believe a thing she said.”
The shaggy detective shrugged. “We want you downtown.”
Kate ducked inside a phone booth and unfolded the door, sliding it open again until the light went off. “Damn it, why are you out when you know what I’m going through? They made me come to police headquarters for a test to see if I shot Nathan. Now they want to talk again. I’ve been giving them the story like you told me and they’re going to check it with you. I still haven’t gotten any sleep, or found someone to open the club, and whenever I get a second to myself, I think about … about the way Nathan looked and, God, I feel so terrible I wish it had been me instead.” Without warning the connection was broken. “Damn it,” she said again.
She was fighting back tears without success. She found more change inside her bag and dialed the number, waited for the tone.
“This is Marlowe. My buddy Stan is out right now …”
“Oh, fuck you, too,” Kate said. Then: “The funeral is tomorrow morning.”
The gawkers at the lamppost had given way to men in business suits and running shoes, thirty-fivish mothers pushing high-tech strollers. They stared earnestly at the brownstone and then moved on as others took their place. Kate went up the stoop pretending they weren’t there. The house looked like a bomb had hit and she was ground zero. She felt tears welling up again, but was cried out a long time ago.
The middle steps were gone from the staircase, seized by crime-scene technicians with a section of the runner and the bench seat. In yellow chalk at the bottom of the flight was the rough outline of a man and, over the chest, like the target on a fencer’s vest, a splotch of dried blood. The anteroom was littered with strips of tape and plastic bags, glass vials that had been emptied into Nathan’s still veins. The banister was gray with fine powder, as if the house had been sealed for ages. Kate dipped her thumb in the dust and examined a smear of loops and whorls against the dark wood.
She climbed the stairs without passing over the chalk marks, squeezing away from the yellow drawing as though it delineated holy ground. She paused before the empty space and peered into the vault. How much could the envelopes have contained? How much for Nathan’s life? She jumped to the landing and ran into the bedroom, sprawling on the mattress in all her clothes.
She pulled the telephone receiver off the hook and buried it under the pillow. The shrill pulsing of the warning signal startled her and she hung up again. She zipped off her jacket and tossed it on a chair and by the time her head touched the pillow she was asleep, dreaming that she was a little girl seeing Coney Island for the first time.
A man with powerful hands was dragging her into the skeletal shadow of the Typhoon. She was terrified of the roller coaster and couldn’t stop crying. She wanted to run away, but the man was too fast for her and caught her every time she tried. He kissed her on the mouth. It was Nathan, looking happier than she ever had seen him.
They sat in the first car climbing over a beach dark with people. She held the bar so tightly that her hands hurt. Nathan’s arms were high over his head, but she could tell that he was scared. Then the car plummeted off the track and they soared over green water lapping against the horizon. The wind was ringing in her ears. She let go of the bar to cover her head and her hand hit something hard. She woke with the phone in her fist. “Hello?” she said.
“Kate, where were you?”
“Nathan?”
“What?”
“Oh,” Kate said. “Oh, it’s you.” Bluffing, trying to collect her wits. “I didn’t recognize your voice.”
“I’ve been calling all morning. Here … at the club. Even Brooklyn.”
“Howard?”
“Who did you think it was?”
“No one,” Kate said sadly. “No one at all. How is everything?”
What she expected was a five-minute monologue, his adventures embellished. Instead he said, “Not so good.”
How did he know?
“In fact, it couldn’t get much worse.”
Things were coming into focus. She was afraid to say anything.
“I’m in trouble with the police, Kate.”
You too? she almost asked.
“Kate …?”
“Yes.”
“I’m calling from prison.”
“Where? Were you hijacked?”
“No such luck,” he said. “I’m still in Israel. Small world. They put me in a cell across from a man from Glukhov, my hometown in Russia.”
“At least you have someone to talk with about old times,” she told him. Not believing a word of what he’d said, waiting for the punch line.
“A war criminal. A guard at Maidanek. He’s here awaiting trial for crimes against humanity.”
Kate said, “You’re at the airport, aren’t you? You want someone to pick you up.”
“I want you to get me out of this terrible place.”
Another bad dream, Kate thought. Better yet, Howard and Nathan had gotten together somehow to plot a morbid joke at her expense. She forgave them, though. God, if only she could. “You’re not in New York?” she said cautiously.
“In Ayalon Prison. Between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. In maximum security.”
“But how …? I don’t understand.”
“It’s a long story.”
“You have to tell me every last detail when you get back,” she said. “No excuses.”
“I’ll tell you now. But first, did you look under the stairs yet, like I told you?”
He knew, damn it. He knew everything and was drawing it out of her as cruelly as he could. “I was going to,” she said.
“When you do,” he warned her, “you will find more than money there. Didn’t you wonder about the house, how I am able to indulge in such luxury on what I take out of the Knights?”
“I happen to know you’re doing very well.”
“Not that well. To maintain my standard of living it is necessary that I acquire another trade. So I am a dealer in hard-to-obtain goods. Two, t
hree times a year I move a bissel cocaine from my second adopted land to the first.”
“Howard, you?” Any other time, she would have had to laugh. “You got caught smuggling dope?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” he told her. “It is also my pleasure to provide Israel with such military equipment as the United States government is not keen its most loyal ally should have. This is what brought me to New York in the first place.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe it,” he said wearily. “Believe it.” In the background Kate heard someone speaking Hebrew too fast for her to pick out more than an occasional word. “They are telling me to get to the point,” Howard said. “But the point is that I am here.”
“Who’s telling you?”
“What I’m trying to explain,” he went on, “is that sneaking electronics gear out of the U.S. is not so different from bringing cocaine into Israel. For me, exactly the same. I transported both in parcels the customs inspectors at Lod Airport were under orders not to look into.”
Kate asked, “Then how did you wind up in jail?”
“Politics. A new bunch came in at the defense ministry and no one told the customs people not to peek. The result is I share a television with a Nazi. If you won’t help, for a very, very long time.”
“What can I do?”
“Go to the stairs when you hang up and look in the vault.”
Kate sighed deeply.
“…Did you hear?”
“Yes, Howard. But there’s—”
“You must do this for me,” he said sternly. “Next to the cocaine you’ll see smaller packages. Last time, I told you not to touch. Today I’m telling the opposite. Inside are electrical devices called krytrons, which come in handy if you are looking to construct a trigger for a medium-size nuclear device—like my friends here are doing. Doing so openly, I might add. They don’t care if you or the whole world finds out, so long as they get them. They want these krytrons immediately, not when I planned to bring them with the next shipment of cocaine. They will be delighted to let me free when I … when we turn them over. Not one second before.”
“I’m afraid I have some awful news,” Kate began.
“Tell me some other time. What is happening to me is all the bad news I can take for now. I am asking you to bring these devices I have to Tel Aviv. Tomorrow is not too soon. Do you understand?”
“I can’t, Howard. I just can’t.”
“Do you want me to rot away in this miserable cell?” he screamed at her. It was the first time she had heard him raise his voice and the effect was paralyzing. “Kate,” he said more calmly, “You can’t imagine what it’s like. All these crazy Arabs, the noise. And the food. It isn’t even kosher.”
“Are you sitting down?” Words were arranging themselves on her tongue, but she hadn’t the heart to get them out. Not the way Howard sounded. If she did, that would make two men dead because of her. “Are you?”
“What is it?” he asked.
“I can’t come …” She stopped. “I mean I can’t come right away.”
“What is more important than getting me out of here?”
“Nothing,” Kate said. “It’s … uh, you see, it’s … because I don’t have a passport.”
Howard exhaled deeply. “You had me scared for a moment. I thought you didn’t care enough to be bothered.”
“Howard! How can you say such a thing?”
“Prison puts crazy ideas in a man’s head sometimes. Even after only two days.”
“I can understand.”
“Not unless you’ve been in a place like this,” he told her. “…So how soon can I tell them you will be here?”
“I’ll go to the passport office right away. At this time of year, it shouldn’t take long.”
“You’re the only one who could do this for me. I knew I could count on you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Kate said.
Bucyk stood at the candy display, watching a counterman whip up an egg cream in a glass etched with a Fresca logo. “Not so much milk,” he said. “I don’t have ulcers, not yet.”
The counterman dried his fingers on a linen apron. For thirty-five years he had been talking about selling the luncheonette and getting into a dry business, something where his hands wouldn’t be chapped all the time. He pushed the glass across the chipped marble with the seltzer and a spoon. “Make it yourself, you know so much.”
Bucyk sucked at the foam as he went to a table at the window. Across Coney Island Avenue was a yellow brick mortuary with a white Star of David under a fading swastika on the awning. Parked at the curb were a black Caddy limo and a stubby gray hearse. It was the smallest, plainest, no doubt highest mpg hearse Bucyk had seen. Without flowers, he thought, it looked stripped. The Jews, even the ones right off the boat, had an attitude they carried all the way to the grave.
Men in dark suits were milling on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes down to the end in the European fashion. One by one they stubbed the tiny butts in a bowl of white sand and filed solemnly inside the building. Bucyk brought his egg cream to the counter for another squirt of chocolate. What was going on across the street was not like a Yankees game, where he could kick himself if he missed the first pitch. He stood at the door thrashing the drink with a spoon. When the seltzer and milk were gone and about two inches of syrup stood at the bottom, he left the glass on the counter and stepped into traffic.
A tray piled with black skullcaps sat on a table in the empty lobby. Bucyk played his hand over the cool silk, then tugged his fedora over his eyes. He picked up a prayer card and studied the Hebrew characters until he noticed phonetic lettering upside down on the opposite page. He inched open the chapel door and saw four men bringing in a plain pine box. A fucking orange crate. An attitude they carried all the way to the grave—and into it.
As the rabbi intoned a blessing, Bucyk slipped inside. He had the last six rows of chairs to himself. About twenty men and women were clustered up front and off to one side three boys not much younger than Nathan, with the same bony cheeks and gray eyes. Kate sat in the second row between two women who looked like she would with another thirty pounds. When she lifted her head from a black book, the big lenses magnified red-rimmed eyes.
Bucyk put an arm over the next two seats. He felt comfortable, buoyant in the drone of prayer. In a way, he thought, this was his party, his and Nathan’s. Already he had made peace with his conscience, though he hoped he wouldn’t have to do the same for a jury.
The rabbi was middle-aged, with a manicured black beard. He finished with his prayers and addressed the mourners in Russian. Probably telling them that what had happened was God’s will. He took off metal-rimmed glasses and put them carefully on the maple lectern, pushed his yarmulke on the back of his head.
“A klug tzu Columbus,” he said in Yiddish.
“A curse on Columbus. Shame on America for allowing our beloved Nathan to be taken so senselessly and violently from us.”
Bucyk put his hand in his lap and slouched down. He kept his eyes on his shoes till the coffin had been carried out and the mourners were streaming to the door.
Kate went across the aisle to hug a stout woman in a silver wig who was leaning for support on two of the boys. Then she followed the family to the rear of the chapel. As she walked past his row, Bucyk touched her elbow. “Can I talk to you a minute?” he asked.
Kate looked at him as if she didn’t recognize the face, and his hand went to his nose and jiggled it. To one of the other women she said, “I’ll be right out.” She went with Bucyk into a corner. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“First of all,” he said, “I want to extend my, you know, condolences, to you and to the family. I know how much he meant to you.”
Kate waved her hands in frustration. “What are you doing here?”
“Still working for you,” he told her.
“Now?”
“You always hear about criminals returning to the s
cene of the crime. Forget it, it hardly happens. What they sometimes do, they go to the funeral. Gives them a sense of accomplishment. I thought it would be nice if I paid my respects and checked for strangers at the same time. You didn’t see anyone looks like they don’t belong here?”
Kate shook her head.
“I didn’t think so.”
“Is that all? The car is leaving for the cemetery.”
He put a hand on her shoulder and held her there. “I’ll try and be quick,” he said. “Homicide dicks stopped by last night. From what I get from them, you’re not sticking to the story.”
Kate’s eyes widened. “But I told them everything just the way we discussed it.”
“You certain? This is important.”
“Shhh.” She glanced at the last of the mourners moving into the lobby. “Of course I’m certain.”
“These guys are cagier than I gave them credit for.” He toyed with the second button on his jacket. “They’re trying to turn us on each other.”
“The detectives I talked to seemed to believe me. They said I passed the residue test.”
“They don’t put a lot of currency in that,” he told her. “It doesn’t prove you weren’t wearing gloves. And it doesn’t tell them you didn’t pay somebody to hit him.”
Kate started to say something. Bucyk shook her off. “I know, I know,” he said. “But that’s the way these guys think.”
“Does that mean I can expect more of a hard time?”
“Not if you keep reminding them we were together. Do that, and eventually the idea will penetrate their thick skulls.”
“To think they believe I could actually—”
“You didn’t tell me yet,” he said. “What happened with you and Nicholas?”
One of the heavyset women came back into the chapel. “We’re waiting,” she said.
“I’ve got to go now.”
“I know this isn’t the ideal time to be asking,” Bucyk said, “but I have to find out.”
Kate looked at the other woman. “Hold the car,” she said. When they were alone again she told Bucyk, “Nothing happened. Okay?”
“Fine by me.” He took his hand away and Kate went quickly into the lobby. “Fine by Nicholas, too. At least that’s what we’re hearing from his friends. Whatever it is you’re putting out, the guy can’t get enough. He wants to see you again.”
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