Zaddik, page 12
“Such a dream this was! I should have such a dream. And you say it was nothing. This is why you need help. You see? You understand?”
“My husband told me your great-great-grandfather was a zaddik. You must be very proud,” said Sophie.
“Oh, yes,” said Taylor. “Very proud. But, Rabbi, if Satmar and Lubavitch are such enemies, why are you so concerned about the death of this diamond dealer? He was a Satmarer, right? And why would the Satmarer rebbe make a wedding for his daughter with the Lubavitcher rebbe’s son? I don’t understand.”
“Ach, all this talk about death and fighting. This is not conversation for Shabbos,” said Kalman. “I’ll tell you a proper Shabbos story.”
As if that were a cue, Moshe stood up from the table and walked into the living room, trailed by his wife and his mother. The young man from South Africa and his wife followed, leaving Taylor at the table with Rabbi Kalman, Sarah, and Sophie’s mother, Mrs. Bloom, who was fast asleep and snoring softly on her chair.
“Once,” began Rabbi Kalman, ignoring the exodus from the table and speaking directly to Taylor, “Rabbi Barukh of Mezbizh was entertaining a guest from Israel. This man was one of those who are always sad, always mourning for Zion, and cannot forget their sadness for an instant. On the eve of the Sabbath, Rabbi Barukh sang the song ‘He who sanctifies the seventh day,’ and when he came to the part ‘Beloved of the Lord, you who await the rebuilding of Ariel,’ he saw his guest sitting there like a lump, gloomy as always. So the rabbi stopped singing and shouted in the man’s face, ‘Beloved of the Lord, you who await the rebuilding of Ariel, on this holy day of the Shabbos, be joyful and happy!’ And the man was so stunned, so surprised to be shouted at in this manner, he forgot his sadness and so learned to celebrate the Sabbath properly.
“Ach, believe me, Dov,” said Kalman, “it’s a better story in Yiddish. But this is why we sing and dance on the Sabbath. And this is why such things as we were speaking of before are not to be spoken of.”
Rabbi Kalman began to sing another nigun. Taylor waited for him to finish, then told him he was growing tired.
“Tired?” said Kalman. “Tired? It’s not even one in the morning. So, what do you think of my Saraleh?”
Taylor saw the color rush to Sarah’s cheeks as she stood up. “If my father is going to discuss me, it would only be polite for me to leave. I will see you tomorrow morning, Mr. Taylor.”
Taylor scrambled to his feet and said, “I hope so,” as Sarah left.
“So? Nu?” asked Kalman.
“She’s very beautiful.”
“An old maid. Twenty-eight and never married. I try to make a shidukh, a match. She don’t want no one. Now she’s too old, no one wants her except old men with grandchildren already.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“You think I’m making it up? I’m telling you. You know something else?”
“What?”
“She’s a college girl. She went to college, to the Fashion Institute, in Manhattan, to study clothes. Can you imagine? This is a thing you study? Clothes? I told her this is foolishness. I told her, if you go to college, you leave my house. So she does. Imagine. But I’m weak and I take her back. So now she is like a man. She has a business, she sells clothes, and makes money, and no one wants her.”
“What’s wrong with having a business?”
“Ach, there’s nothing wrong. Nothing wrong. Except I’ll tell you what’s wrong. She has no husband, she has no children. So what kind of life is that? Tell me. What kind of life?”
“What’s the name of her business?” Taylor asked.
“Some nareshkayt, some foolishness. I don’t know, I don’t care, I don’t go there. She makes her mother crazy. She’ll be the death of her mother.”
“She seems very nice to me.”
“To you. To you.” Rabbi Kalman poured himself the last of the Scotch and mixed it with a splash of seltzer. “Does it bother you, this Scotch?” he asked Taylor.
“No,” Taylor lied. “In AA they teach us that the disease is a personal matter. What you drink, how much you drink, it’s not my affair, it’s yours.”
“A terrible thing, this problem. You’d be surprised how many men in our community have this problem. And drugs, too, would you believe? Terrible. Drugs are a tool of der Tayvl, the No-Good-One, to make men forget themselves, to make them despair.
“Anyway, did you eat good?”
“Yes. It was all delicious. Your wife is a wonderful cook.”
“She’s all right. A good wife. So. So I told my Sarah that you are going to need her help to talk to the friends of that unfortunate man, may his blood be avenged. You will also need help to read the books about Lublin, the Seer, and Hirsh Leib. Unfortunately, there are very few in English, and those are no good. And do you know what?”
“What?”
“She said yes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What’s not to understand? Many people here don’t speak English so good. When you talk to them, you will need a translator. And you can’t read the books. And so? And so my Sarah will translate.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary, Rabbi.”
“You don’t think, you don’t think. But I know. Enough of this. We’ll sing.”
Around two o’clock, while Rabbi Kalman, Moshe, and the South African were in the living room, arguing animatedly in Yiddish about what he assumed to be a point of Torah, Taylor slipped off to what he had been told was Moshe’s old bedroom. The walls were bare, and the only furniture was a single bed, a small bed table, an empty bookcase, and a wooden dresser painted yellow. There was a lamp, a bowl of water, a pitcher, and a glass on the bed table. A glass brick filled with clear marbles sat on the windowsill, and a plant grew out of it—mother-in-law’s tongue, he thought. Rebecca used to have them in her apartment, he recalled. A small closet was empty, and Taylor hung his suit in it.
He lay down in the boxer shorts he had begun wearing when he’d first started trying to get Carol pregnant. After they’d found out that the odds against them were about a million to one, he had tried to go back to Jockey shorts but discovered that he preferred boxers.
The bed was comfortable and the two feather pillows soft and inviting. He was logy from all the food, and it had been a long day. He thought of Sarah. It wouldn’t be hard to get turned on to her, he thought. Good presence. Smart girl. Beautiful hair. Small waist, big breasts. Not his type, but what did they say about variety? Spice of life? And then he remembered that he had forgotten to call Naomi.
Another amend he owed. He’d call her tomorrow to apologize. Might as well break it off, too.
Then he thought of Shumach’s mysterious blonde, although he was less impressed with the coincidence than Schumach was. He doubted if Schumach had much experience with women or with tall blondes. Hasids, in general, seemed to be rather short, especially the women. Like Sarah. He’d mention the blonde to Detective Hill tomorrow anyway. It would be something to trade for whatever Hill knew.
As Taylor reached over to turn off the bedside lamp, it blinked out of its own accord. On a timer, he thought. What do they call it? A Shabbos zeyger. A Sabbath clock. He checked his watch. So they don’t expect to go to sleep until 2:30, Taylor thought. Good. I’ll get up early, 5:30, go back to my apartment, have a cup of coffee, then head out to Hill’s. I’ll make my excuses to the rabbi later.
Is he trying to fix me up with his daughter? Taylor wondered. A Yiddishe goy like me? Couldn’t be. On the other hand, a translator might come in handy. And she seemed like a nice girl. Very pretty. Beautiful, actually. Incredible hair. Incredible skin.
Taylor slept.
Chapter 19 West Fifty-ninth Street, Manhattan
Saturday, September 11
A WOMAN WALKING her cocker spaniel felt a chill as she passed the lobby at 157 West Fifty-ninth. A native New Yorker, she knew enough not to ignore this internal alarm, and she also knew enough not to stop walking. So she glanced furtively into the dark vestibule and saw a tall thin white man in sunglasses and a leather jacket smoking a cigarette. A scary guy, she thought, but not a mugger, not this time, and she hurried on.
The Cutter thought briefly of following her, pulling her into an alley, slitting her throat. It would be easy, he thought. It would be amusing. Then he felt his stomach knot and a bitter fluid flow into his mouth. He spat, but the taste lingered.
The Cutter felt sick, angry, and put upon. He had not planned on being so long in New York, a city he detested, a city of mongrels—shvartzers and Puerto Ricans and Chinese. A city that bred the Hasids who were even now overrunning Israel, weakening the state and the army with their old-fashioned religion, refusing to serve, expecting others to do their fighting for them while they screamed about throwing the Arabs out of the Holy Land. He had spent days among them in Williamsburg, weeks, trying to find out to whom the Satmarer rebbe would have entrusted the diamond and finally being given a name—Zalman Gottleib—by a fat, foolish, boastful little girl, a friend of the rebbe’s silly daughter.
These were Jews like my father, the Cutter thought, Jews who went meekly to the ovens, the Shema on their lips. These were the Jews who thought that the Holocaust was God’s judgment. Just being among them, just seeing them on the streets with their pasty skin and their black beards, brought back dreams of the camps, dreams of his father standing by as the Nazis came to take his family away. And with the dreams came the fantasies of blood and revenge that made the Cutter’s head ache and loosened his bowels.
He spat again. What was he doing here, watching Maria’s apartment so early in the morning? The whore and that stupid Israeli would not be up before noon. It was the Magician’s fault, he thought, realizing how angry he still was with Czartoryski.
Yesterday afternoon Czartoryski had taken him to pay a courtesy call on the Magician’s Italian friend, Joseph della Francesca, in an office in the back of a butcher store near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The Cutter had not wanted to go, but Czartoryski had insisted.
The Cutter knew that Czartoryski paid the Italians for the right to sell drugs, and he had assumed, correctly, that this della Francesca was a middleman. Czartoryski had told the Cutter that della Francesca was unusually intelligent for an Italian. He told him that the mobster was related to the Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca. But to the Cutter he had seemed to be a typical cowardly mafioso, one of those hoodlums who learned how to act and how to dress from Hollywood movies. He reeked of cologne, and his skin was almost black from sun lamps. To the Cutter, his brown, bovine eyes seemed dumb and frightened. This was a man, the Cutter had thought, who was forever expecting a blow to fall. And that attracted blows. The Cutter’s hands twitched.
When they were alone in the office, della Francesca had made a great show of embracing Czartoryski and presenting him with a large salami. Then the Italian had shocked the Cutter. He said that the salami was in honor of the way Czartoryski had disposed of the Jew diamond dealer, and he poured three glasses of brandy. He had smiled at the Cutter as he’d offered him a glass.
The smells coming from the butcher shop out front, the heat, and the idea that this fool knew his business had combined to make the Cutter physically ill. He turned his back on the Italian and walked out of the office. A little later Czartoryski came out, and they took a cab back to Manhattan.
In the taxi Czartoryski had touched the Cutter’s knee. “Do not concern yourself about him,” Czartoryski said. “He is not as stupid as he seems. And we have done him a great service. The marriage threatened his profits. Now both the Lubavitchers and the Satmarers will continue paying him separately for the kosher meat they bring into the city.
“You are not happy, I know,” said Czartoryski, studying his old friend and thinking that perhaps the Cutter would soon die. Well, thought Czartoryski, that wouldn’t be so bad. It was long past time to recruit a younger assistant. “You wish to return to Tel Aviv,” Czartoryski said. “Soon we will be finished here.”
But the Cutter had spent another restless night, smoking and staring into the darkness. And when he did doze, his dreams took him back to the camps, and once again he was knee deep in corpses, listening to the guards shout, smelling the rotting flesh combined with the bittersweet aroma of the gas chambers, fishing in black, broken mouths for gold, staring into sightless eyes, trembling on the lip of the mass grave.
Perhaps, thought the Cutter, I will do them both, Levin and Maria. The hell with the Magician, risking our lives in order to curry favor with that comic-book gangster. And as the Cutter contemplated killing Maria Radziwell along with Ariel Levin, he felt his stomach relax and his loins stir. Removing the whore would be a blessing. It would help redeem him.
He made himself a promise: When the time came, he would make her suffer.
Chapter 20 Eastchester, New York
Saturday, September 11
DETECTIVE FRANK HILL, wearing a blue-and-red New York Knickerbocker tank top and baggy gray sweat pants that helped conceal his growing gut, greeted Dov Taylor at the door of his split-level home. At first Taylor wondered how Hill could afford such a large house, but as Hill led him into the kitchen Taylor saw that the living room rug was threadbare, the furniture was cheap and battered, the walls and ceilings were cracked and peeling, and the linoleum in the kitchen was stained and chewed up. Every penny he had, thought Taylor, and then a few more, had gone into buying this place. There was nothing left over.
Frank Hill’s house depressed him. It smelled of failure. On the other hand, there were toys scattered around the house, so, thought Taylor, he beats me there. He has kids.
“Want a beer?” asked Hill, taking two bottles of Bud out of the refrigerator.
“No, thanks,” said Taylor.
“Coffee? It’s from breakfast, but it’s not bad.”
“Sure. Thanks.”
Hill poured Taylor a cup from a Mr. Coffee machine.
“You take sugar, cream?”
“Everything,” said Taylor.
“Here,” said Hill, handing Taylor a sugar bowl and a container of half-and-half. “You make it. Let’s go out back.”
Hill, beer in hand, led Taylor out through the kitchen door to a small deck with two beach chairs overlooking what seemed to be a field of wheat.
“Like it?” asked Hill. “I haven’t cut it for almost two years now. I used to cut it every fucking weekend, or every other fucking weekend, and then one day the guy who lives next door tells me I oughtta mow my lawn more often, I’m making the neighborhood look bad. So I said, You’re absolutely right, pal, and I haven’t cut it since. I tell everybody it’s Japanesy. You know, natural. What do you think?”
“I think it looks good.”
“Yeah? It looks like shit. The neighbors think I’m nuts. They hate me. But so what. The kids can still play in it. They lose a lot of balls, though.”
“How many kids you got?”
“Three. Two boys and a girl.”
“Nice.”
“The two boys are at Little League, and the girl, Jillian, is at her dancing lesson.”
“And your wife?”
“Shopping. You got kids?”
“No.”
“How come?”
“Divorced.”
“You’re lucky. I mean, I’m not saying I’d change anything—I love my kids, kids are great—but you, you can do whatever the fuck you please, you know? You’re not tied down like me. Not like I had any choice. Bing, bang, bing, you know. Stick it in, nine months later, a kid. Three times. First time we got it on—bang. She was showing at the wedding. Then, right after Jillian, she gets pregnant again. Don’t ever let anyone tell you you can’t get pregnant while you’re nursing. Then I catch a break, talked her into using the diaphragm. Then one day she don’t put it in, bing, here comes Sean. Then I got smart. Got a vasectomy. Walked around like someone kicked me in the balls for a week, but that’s it. Never notice it now.”
Taylor felt his stomach turning over. Why was it that whenever he told anyone he was childless, they always stressed how easy it was for them? How many operations had Carol had? How many doctors had they seen? How much money had they spent? And this asshole has a vasectomy? Fuck him.
“Wish I had two girls, though, instead of two boys,” Hill continued. “Girls are better. All the boys want to do is play ball. A little is okay, but they’re after you all the fucking time, and I’m not as young as I used to be.”
“None of us are.”
“You got that right. Also, girls think the sun rises and sets on Daddy. My little girl, I mean, I come home, she’s all over me.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah. So, enough about the kids. We’re alone. Just us guys. But I’m the only one drinking.”
“Early for me.”
“It’s just beer.”
“Still early.”
Hill looked out over his backyard jungle. “So? What can I do you for?”
“You can tell me what you’ve come up with on the Gottleib-Stein killing.”
“Nugatz. Shit. Fuck-all. That’s what I got. Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why you interested?”
“Well, actually, I haven’t been doing much since I retired, and my rabbi asked me to look into it, so I said I would. I told him I couldn’t do anything you couldn’t do better, but he still asked me, you know, see what I could do,” said Taylor, hoping to allay Hill’s suspicions by stroking his vanity.
“Your rabbi, huh. But you’re not one of them. I mean, you ain’t got the big beard or nothing.”
“No. But my rabbi does.”
“Uh-huh. So how come you left the force?”
“Just got tired of it. Or it got tired of me.”
“You know,” said Hill, “I asked around about you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Heard you were a good cop. Super-Jew, right? Heard you were a big boozer. Guess no more, huh?”
