Never Again

by Harvey A. Schwartz

  Debra Reuben interrupted. “Sarah, I understand all that, but Chaim and I have a more immediate concern. We can’t stay on that boat much longer; at least, I know that I can’t stand it. We need someplace to stay. Do you have any suggestions?”

  Levi interrupted before Sarah could respond.

  “And it has to be someplace, can I use the phrase, ‘out of the way.’There is a slight chance that the government may take some interest in us,” Levi said. “I assume that an Israeli naval officer and a former cabinet minister aren’t high on America’s invitation list right now. I myself would rather not be locked up in any stadium.”

  Goldhersh looked at the former Israeli naval officer closely. Reuben had been part of an Israeli government that Goldhersh viewed as weak, as far too willing to compromise with Arabs. Here she was now, though, with an in-the-flesh member of the Israeli military. He placed an arm on Levi’s shoulder.

  “Well, Chaim, I’d like to have you not too far away,” Abram said. “I was never in the military, you know, and I wouldn’t mind having somebody look at my warehouse who knows something about weapons and explosives. I got quite a deal on some drums of something labeled C4. I know that’s an explosive, but that’s about all I know.”

  “C4? That sure is an explosive,” Levi answered. “We trained with that for commando operations in the navy. Half the C4 in the world is manufactured, or was manufactured, in Israel. It is a magnificent weapon as long as you remember that it packs a bigger bang than TNT. You can mold it like modeling clay. You can drop it from the roof and it won’t go off, but use the right detonator and its child’s play to make a big boom with it.

  “I set off some great bangs in training. We’d leave our patrol boat at night, run a rubber boat up a beach and rush ashore to the target—all in training, never did it for real—stuff it with C4 and set the detonators, then run for the rubber boats.” He looked at the other man oddly. “How in hell did you get that stuff, Abram?”

  “Let’s just say that I spent a lot of time hanging around Army bases. I got to know some gentlemen marketing heroin. Once they learned how much more I’d pay for toys like that C4, they started taking payment from their soldier customers in goods rather than cash. That way they made money from both ends of the deal. It was all in a good cause,” Abram said. “I doubt the Army knew what it was missing.”

  “Stop that kind of talk,” Sarah said, looking at her husband with a not-very-loving expression. “Boys and explosives and guns. Stop it.”

  The huge man obeyed his wife’s command, for the moment. Levi saw Abram’s eyes light with excitement—not uncontrolled anger—when he talked about the drums of explosives in his warehouse. Drums of C4, Levi thought. That will get some attention.

  Sarah interrupted Levi’s reverie.

  “Debra, Chaim, I have an idea about a place where you two could stay. I’ll have to make a phone call first, but I think it could work out very well. Remember, Debbie, I told you that I knew somebody with a vacation cottage here in Brooklin? Well, she’s Nancy Lowenstein, married to Arthur Lowenstein. He’s the CEO or the chairman or something of KGR Insurance, that big insurance company that advertises all over TV and the newspapers. They have a summer cottage here on the water.

  “I know Nancy from a fundraising campaign she and I managed together for Ethiopian Jewish children. It was so beautiful; those children are so beautiful. Imagine, black Jews. We raised over five million for them. Nancy broke her back working so hard, and broke her husband’s bank account. We had an event at their house here. Nancy told me they’d had their caretaker come by to turn on the water and electricity because they hadn’t been to the house in two years themselves.”

  Sarah smiled at a memory.

  “Nancy was so excited to do something for Israel. And she was charmed by an Israeli man who hinted that the money was not going to be used entirely to help poor black Jewish kids. Nancy thought he was involved with the Mossad—you know, the Israeli secret service?”

  She looked inquisitively at Levi and Reuben.

  “We’ve heard of Mossad,” Levi said dryly.

  “Well, she just loved the whole cloak-and-dagger aspect to it. I’ll ask about opening her house to help some secret friends from Eretz. I’m sure she’ll go for it.”

  “The sooner the better,” Reuben said. “I want to sleep in a bed that doesn’t move.”

  “And I want to move something off that boat. The sooner the better,” Levi added.

  Abram gave Levi an odd look after that statement but chose to go no further, for now.

  The Lowenstein house was far more than a summer cottage. Besides the six bedrooms and the sauna, exercise room, media room, and sauna, what made the house most attractive to Levi was the long dock that extended on stone pilings into water deep enough to motor the sailboat to the float.

  He’d spent the better part of the afternoon cutting away the fiberglass covering he’d built over the starboard settee water tank, careful not to let his battery-powered circular saw come anywhere near the metal shell surrounding the device inside the tank.

  The boat’s cabin was filled with dust and shards from the cut fiberglass, but the metal cylinder, eighteen inches across and three feet or so long, lay on the cabin berth across from where Levi was working. It was still sealed in the clear plastic he wrapped around it in the hope of keeping the device dry when he filled the tank with water. He left it wrapped. It looked less ominous that way, like some sort of kitchen trash can still in its bubble wrap after being lifted out of the shipping box from Amazon.com.

  Besides, Levi liked the idea of having something, even if it was just a few layers of clear plastic, between the device and his hands. He had no idea how much radiation leaked from the thing.

  I suppose that is the least of my worries, he thought. I’ve been sleeping on top of it all this time.

  It was getting dark as Levi finished his efforts inside the cabin. He walked up the dock and into the house, looking for Reuben. What he saw stopped him in his tracks.

  “Nancy Lowenstein and I must be the same size,” Reuben said, smiling. “Although her tastes are a bit flashier than mine. She has most of the Victoria’s Secret catalog in her closet.”

  Reuben looked well scrubbed, well manicured, and, to Levi, sexy. She wore an extremely short and tight black skirt. Her stomach was bare. She wore a black leather halter top that tied in the rear, leaving most of her back bare. Her red hair shone and smelled faintly of an organic herbal shampoo.

  “It is so wonderful to get off that boat,” she said. “I felt like dressing up. Sarah and Abram stocked up the fridge before they left, and the Lowensteins have a pretty impressive wine collection. Why don’t you clean up—you’re filthy—and we’ll celebrate our first night on shore.”

  “Not yet,” Levi answered. “I have a bit of heavy lifting to do first. I’ll feel better with that thing off the boat and stashed away on shore. I’m going to carry it into the basement and leave it there tonight. We’ll find a place for it tomorrow, and then we’ll figure out what to do with the boat.”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Reuben said, “you can take it out and sink it. I’m ready for a long break from the deep blue sea.”

  “That’s not a half bad idea,” Levi said. “We’ve got to get rid of it somehow. You start on dinner. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Then I’ll clean myself up and we can really and truly celebrate.” He laughed. “Get a couple of bottles opened. We deserve it.”

  Debra lifted a tall glass half filled with white wine. She pointed at a bottle on the counter, which Levi noticed was more than half empty.

  “Way ahead of you on that, sailor,” she said, grinning.

  Forty-five minutes later, the cylinder, still wrapped in plastic, lay on the basement workbench. Levi scrubbed his arms and hands with extra energy in the shower, hoping to wash away any radiation his body had absorbed. While Arthur Lowenstein’s clothes were too small for Levi, he was surprised to find that Reuben had laundered the
few clothes he’d brought in from the boat. He appeared downstairs for dinner, dressed in cleaned khakis and his one collared shirt.

  A huge pot sat on the stove, steam billowing as the water inside reached a boil. On the counter lay two two-pound lobsters, their claws wrapped in wide, yellow rubber bands. Their antennae waved from side to side and their fantails opened and closed. Two ears of fresh-shucked corn were in a ceramic bowl near the stove.

  Two bottles of Meursault stood upright in a bucket of ice, two wine glasses next to it. Diana Krall sang “I’m Thru With Love” on the best stereo Levi ever heard.

  Reuben stood behind the kitchen island, her arms spread wide, her hands on the counter, leaning forward toward Levi, her cleavage enhanced by Victoria’s Secret’s best engineering. She smiled at him and said softly, “Well, sailor, what do you think?”

  Levi struggled to bring his eyes up to her face. He, too, smiled.

  “To quote Richard Thompson, whose songs made it all the way to Eretz Yisrael, red hair and black leather is my favorite color scheme,” he said. “I think I just might be able to forget about the atomic bomb in the basement for a little while.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Ben Shapiro thought that with all the craziness—he remembered his Nana Ida’s complaints about mishegas, Yiddish for craziness—with all the mishegas in the world and in Boston, why was his house, too, turned on its head? He’d spent the past two nights sleeping alone in the guest room on a lumpy futon rather than the Swedish foam mattress he was used to.

  “You are totally and completely obsessed with this thing,” Sally screamed earlier that week at dinner. “It’s all you talk about and, it seems, all you are doing at work. What about your other cases? Who’s working on them, on the cases that actually make us some money?”

  “My partners understand how important this case is to me. They’re covering me,” Shapiro said. “I’m not obsessed with this. It’s just that this is important, extremely important, maybe the most important thing that has happened in my entire life.”

  “I thought I was the most important thing in your life, or at least that Adam was,” Sally said flatly. “Remember, Adam, your son?”

  “Yes, of course you are, both of you, but I mean in my work life. No, not just my work life—my other-than-my-family life.” Shapiro was fed up with his wife’s complaining about something that he acknowledged had taken over his thoughts and time.

  “Look, honey.” He saw her eyes go wide. She was in no mood for sweet talk. “I mean, listen, I’ve spent my whole life, my whole life as a lawyer at least, taking on case after case to protect peoples’rights. And who have I represented? Gay people, women, poor people, black people, pornographers, Nazis, goddamn Nazis who wanted to hold a goddamn Nazi parade in Boston. And who have I never, ever represented? Whose rights have I never defended? Jews. That’s who. Well, now is the time. You know Primo Levi’s question, his book title, If Not Now, When? I keep thinking that if Ben Shapiro, the great civil rights defender, won’t take a stand for Jews now, when will I? When should I?” Shapiro glared at his wife.

  “You Jews have a fucking famous saying for everything. I’m sick of it all,” Sally said. “You know, Ben, there comes a time when you’ve got to decide whether you’re a Jew or an American. Sometimes you can’t be both. I agree these are difficult times, but, Ben, look, there were enemy soldiers on those boats, not just refugees. Soldiers. And they fired weapons at Americans, at the Coast Guard. And they killed them, they killed every one of them.

  “I can’t stop thinking about the mothers of those poor kids on those boats, killed right in Boston Harbor, where you’d think your son or daughter would be safe. It could have been Adam on those Coast Guard boats. And for you to be defending the people who did that killing, I can’t understand it, Ben. I simply can’t understand it. What would you say to the mother of that girl who was killed, the one in the Coast Guard?”

  He looked at her, assuming her question was rhetorical and that there was more of the same to follow. More likely, he thought, it could have been Adam on those refugee ships. He didn’t dare say that to her. Sally went on.

  “My God, Ben, what if you win? You’re such a good lawyer, you always win. What if you win? What if you get these killers off? What will people say? How will we live with that? What about me? What about Adam? Have you thought about any of that, Mr. Civil Rights?”

  Shapiro’s normal means of dealing with his wife’s anger was to give in. That tactic didn’t leave him satisfied, but it brought their conflicts to an end. Submission squirmed in his belly. He resisted. Not this time, he thought.

  Sally usually won. If she outlasted him. She fired her next salvo.

  “It’s already happening, you know. You are just so caught up that you are oblivious to what is happening, happening even to your own son, you know?”

  “What do you mean,” he asked. “What’s happening? Did something happen to Adam?”

  “Yes. Something. Happened. To. Adam,” Sally said, pausing between each word. “You were on the news again the other night. I know you say you don’t watch yourself on the news because it’s no big deal. But you were on the news a few days ago, another story about you defending that Jew who murdered the Coast Guard people. And they said you said it was all a misunderstanding and your client had nothing to do with anything.

  “Well, there was a memorial service at Adam’s school for the Coast Guard people who were killed. And the principal, Mr. Williams—remember him? You once said he was a wonderful principal. Well, Mr. Williams gave a speech. And he said that the lawyer for the murderers said it was just a ‘misunderstanding.’” She lifted both hands in the air, two fingers extended to place quotation remarks around the word.

  “And then the principal said that anybody who defends a murderer of Americans is as guilty as the murderers themselves. Well, after that some of the kids started talking about how Adam’s father was the lawyer defending that murderer Jew. And I guess they started pushing him around and he got pushed to the ground and somebody kicked him and he came home from school with his clothes all torn, and he was crying like I’ve never heard him cry before. He said they kept calling him a Jew. That is what you are doing to your family. And you didn’t even know about this because you came home so late we were in bed.”

  She glared at Shapiro. Scored some points with that one, she thought. If he doesn’t care about hurting me, he stills cares about his son. Sally Spofford was not a woman to stop when she was winning.

  “And, well, I wasn’t going to tell you this, but some of my friends have been talking, too. You know the Rodger’s dinner party we were supposed to go to next weekend, their anniversary party that they made such a big deal about?”

  “Yes, what about it?”

  “Janice Rodgers called me and, oh so politely of course, you know how totally proper Janice is, suggested that perhaps it would be a good idea if we skipped the party. Because of all that’s happening, she said, as if that’s supposed to explain everything.”

  Shapiro pushed his chair back, walked to the other side of the table and opened his arms to invite his wife to hug. She remained seated, folded her arms across her chest and shook her head from side to side.

  “I’m sorry, Sally,” Shapiro said. “I didn’t know about any of this. Why didn’t you tell me about Adam, or about that party? I know how much you were looking forward to that party. You bought a new dress and everything.”

  Contrition got him nowhere.

  “I didn’t tell you about Adam because this is the first night since it happened that you’ve come home before I went to bed. You may have noticed that we haven’t seen much of each other recently. In fact, when is the last time you saw your son awake? And I didn’t tell you about the party because”—she hesitated, then continued—“because what Janice actually said was that it might be a good idea if you—you, Ben—didn’t come. She said that of course I was still welcome. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do. At least I hadn’t decided
until right now. I just decided that I am going to the party. By myself. I’ll expect you to be home to babysit your son.”

  “If that’s what you want to do, then go ahead and do it,” Shapiro said. “I can’t say I understand, but I guess there isn’t a whole lot I can do about it.”

  He turned his back to his wife and started to walk from the room. She spoke to his back. He stopped and turned.

  “Ben, what I don’t understand is how this one case, this one client, is taking over your life. Can’t you please back off from this case?”

  Shapiro hesitated, stared at the ceiling.

  “Actually, Sally, it isn’t just one case,” he said, instantly realizing that he was opening the door to another storm. “I’m representing a few other people, too, some people who were arrested that night from their homes. There’s a legal committee that was formed to defend all those people who are in custody.”

  Her reaction was what he’d expected, a flash of lightning followed by dark clouds.

  “A legal committee? So what if there is a committee of some sort?” Sally asked. “Are you involved in that, representing all those Israelis, the soldiers who were on those ships? No, no, no, tell me you’re not doing that, Ben.”

  “Actually, they asked me to be the head of the defense committee. And I agreed to do it. That’s what’s kept me so busy the last few days, and nights. Honey, a tzadik? You know, a truly righteous man—”

  She jumped to her feet, waving her hands in front of her face to cut him off.

  “I can’t take this. I’m going up to read. You can do the dishes. Good night.”

  When Shapiro slowly climbed those same stairs two hours later, he found the door closed and his pajamas on the floor in the hall.

  As he pulled into his parking space in the garage next to the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in downtown Boston the next morning, Shapiro recalled that he was scheduled to meet Judy Katz for lunch that day. He was intrigued by the idea of meeting the young woman who he’d read about in the newspapers but never run into. He laughed at himself when he thought that from the photos in the newspapers, she was a real hottie, at least for a lawyer.