Zaddik, page 36
“You have a lot of fans,” said Taylor, his arm taking in the men in the booths.
“Bunch of old farts,” Lansky said. “Alte kockers. When they’re not trying to shnor money off me, they sit around talking about what big shots they used to be. Shtarkers. Tough guys. Killers. Hah! My Meyer would have squashed them like cockroaches.”
Chapter 54 An Apartment in Knightsbridge
London
Friday, October 25
STANDING BY THE WINDOW, wrapped in a blanket, Maria Radziwell shivered and waited for the sun to rise. Sleep was out of the question. Lying in bed, the young Englishman she had picked up at the bar slept curled up on his side like a pink shrimp, his lipstick smeared.
In the gray predawn light, Radziwell looked at his pale, delicate face, his long lashes fluttering in a dream, his dark blond hair plastered to his skull. How do the English ever make babies? she wondered. It seemed to her that every Englishman she had ever met was queer. Last night, as soon as they had gotten to his flat, this one had disappeared into his bathroom and emerged in fishnet stockings, garters, and black lace panties. Teetering on high heels, he’d carried a strap-on dildo that he’d wanted her to wear. Why didn’t he go find a man if that’s what he wanted? she had thought. But she had needed a place to stay, so she’d put it on and fucked him with it until he’d come and then instantly fallen asleep.
She would have much preferred it the other way around. She was, she knew, close to hysterical with fear, and being made love to violently, even by this effete young Englishman—if he could have managed it—would have been a relief. Perhaps then she could have slept. But perhaps not. Awake or asleep, the nightmare was the same.
Yesterday, still not sure of what she was going to do with the money she had taken from the bank, still not sure of when, or where, or even how she was going to flee from this man who was beginning to look at her like a disappointing whore he had ordered up from room service, she had followed Czartoryski.
And seen the Cutter getting out of a cab.
First, she’d run. She’d run down Frith Street to Old Compton Road, and then up Compton to Charing Cross Road. She’d run until her heel broke, and then she’d taken off her shoes and run some more. She’d run until her lungs burned.
She wrapped the blanket around herself more tightly, but—damn these English—the cold was already inside her bones, shaking her like a rag doll. Her stomach heaved at the thought of what the Cutter might do to her, what he would enjoy doing to her.
When she had stopped running, she had hailed a taxi and returned to the hotel, planning to pack some clothes. Then, in the empty room, she had decided against it. Leaving her clothing would give her a little more time before Czartoryski realized that she had gone. And then, terrified and angry, wanting to strike back at him, she had taken the stone, having memorized the combination from watching him on those evenings when he’d taken it out to gaze at and play with.
Now what? she thought. I could hide the diamond. He won’t kill me if he doesn’t know where it is.
No, she thought, he won’t kill you; he’ll just torture you until you tell him. Then he’ll kill you.
Where could she go? Where could she go where Czartoryski and all his Nazi friends (oh, yes, she knew about that) could not find her? Rome? Would she be safe in Rome? And who could help her there?
“What time is it?” the Englishman asked, lifting his head from the pillow.
“Go back to sleep,” said Radziwell. “It is not yet dawn.”
“You must be cold,” the young man said sleepily. “It’s freezing. Come to bed.”
“In a moment,” said Radziwell.
“You were wonderful,” the man said. “Last night. Today, I’d like to show you London. Not the tourist’s London; my London. I’ll take off from work. Take you around, you know. We’ll have fun.”
“Maybe. Now go to sleep.”
“Say yes.”
“Yes. Go to sleep.”
The boy mumbled something and turned over, pulling the blankets up over his head.
So he’d like to take me around London, Radziwell thought ruefully. Show me the city. Perhaps he’d like to wear my clothes, too. They’d fit him, and he’d look good in them. Better than I would right now.
Why do men always want to show you the city they live in? As if you would think they owned it, that it belonged to them and they were giving it to you. As if a million other people didn’t live there.
That detective in New York, Radziwell thought. He also wanted to show me his city.
Her wide-set brown eyes narrowed as she recalled Dov Taylor standing in her doorway in Manhattan, smiling. What had he said? He wanted to show me a village? In New York?
But he liked me, she thought. He wanted to make love to me.
The Cutter tried to kill him and failed, she thought. Had that ever happened before?
The room began to lighten. Soon, she thought, this English boy will get up and start pestering me. Soon Czartoryski will know I have gone, and know that his beloved diamond is gone. And soon the Cutter will be on the street, his knife in his pocket.
Radziwell walked over to the bed and shook the young Englishman.
“Hello,” he said.
“You must take me to the airport,” she said.
“What?”
“I have to go. If you want to be nice to me, hurry up, put your clothes on, and take me to the airport.”
“Wait a bloody minute,” said the Englishman. “The airport? You didn’t say anything about going anywhere. Where the hell are you going?”
“New York,” said Maria Radziwell. “I must go to New York.”
Chapter 55 All Things Beautiful
Kingston Street, Brooklyn
Friday, October 25
HER MOTHER WAS sick with the flu, and Sarah Kalman had promised to help her get ready for Shabbos. There was the cleaning, the shopping, and the cooking to be done before the candlelighting. Tonight, as usual, there would be guests, and their rooms had to be prepared—their beds made, towels laid out for them, extra places set at the table. Mrs. Kalman also wanted to go to the mikvah in the afternoon, and Sarah had said she would go with her. But first, she’d told her mother, she had work to do at the store.
“Why can’t Channah take care of it?” her mother had asked, and Sarah had simply said that although Channah was a great help, her sister-in-law did not like to be left in the store alone. In truth, Channah had become completely useless in recent days, which was too bad because the store had been very busy with women buying new dresses for Adam Seligson’s wedding. Everybody in Crown Heights discussed little else.
The bride—she wasn’t so pretty, they said, very dark, like all the Satmarers. The groom—such a brilliant young man, someday, God forbid not soon, he would be a wonderful rebbe. The reception—with all the Satmarers’ money, it should be the most lavish the world had ever seen.
But Channah did not join in the talk. She spent all her time staring out the window or crying, positive that Sarah’s brother, Moshe, was preparing to divorce her because she had failed to become pregnant.
And, indeed, Sarah knew that to be true. She had gone to Moshe and pleaded with him to take Channah to a doctor, an infertility specialist. She had suggested that Moshe have himself checked out, too. Moshe, as Sarah knew he would, scoffed at both suggestions. He had asked her, his voice dripping with sarcasm, to tell him when and how doctors, a notoriously impious class of people, had discovered the Lord’s secrets. He quoted the Law to her in that pompous way she detested, saying that fulfilling the precept of propagation was one of every Jew’s most important duties—perhaps the most important of all—and therefore it was a man’s duty to divorce a wife who was sterile. Finally he’d told her to mind her own business. What did she, an alte moyd, an old maid, know about men and women and what transpired between them?
Sarah had looked at Moshe and cursed him silently. A man like this, she thought, a cruel, narrow-minded, pusillanimous man, did not deserve children. Go ahead, she thought, divorce your sweet Channah. You don’t deserve her. And may your next wife be barren as well.
Sarah stared at the book in front of her, the real reason she had told her mother that she had to go to the store this morning, even though both mother and daughter knew that no one in Crown Heights would be shopping for dresses on the eve of Shabbos. The book she was reading was a history of the Satmarer Hasidim. Sarah was trying to discover how the Seer’s stone had ended up in the possession of the Satmarers, hoping that that could help Dov Taylor’s investigation. But Sarah had quickly realized that the book, which was little more than a recitation of miracles performed by the various Satmarer rebbes, would be of little use. What she needed was the Satmarer rebbe’s own personal history, and that, she knew, as a Lubavitcher—not to mention a woman—she would never be allowed to see.
Sarah closed the book, and her thoughts returned to Dov Taylor. This was a man, she believed, of vast potential. The vision the Lord had given him was, she thought, a call. The Lord Himself was asking Taylor to help Him right something in His world, something that had gone terribly wrong. And she knew Taylor was afraid of answering that call, afraid of what would be expected of him, afraid of making a commitment. Sometimes it seemed to her that Taylor was the loneliest man she had ever met.
Sarah had tried to discuss Taylor’s vision with her father, but Rabbi Kalman had shrugged and been uncharacteristically reticent, speaking vaguely of how difficult it was to know what went on inside the hearts of men such as Dov Taylor. It dawned on her that her father had divined her true feelings for the detective, and he disapproved.
And Sarah knew he was right. Despite the fact that she considered herself to be an educated, modern woman, despite the fact she felt set apart from the rest of Lubavitcher world, she knew that she would be lost outside it. She would not want to live without the sweetness of Shabbos. She could not imagine herself eating pork, or shellfish, or meat with milk. Even drinking a harmless glass of water in Taylor’s apartment filled her with anxiety.
Furthermore, a man like Taylor would expect things from her that she knew she could not give. And how much could he change? How far could she expect him to come over to her side, to the side of religion and piety, a man whose life had been spent with violence and criminals, a man who had had sex with women who danced in bars and wore short skirts and sheer stockings and did who knew what in bed? Even though Sarah knew that Taylor was attracted to her, did he realize that she was a virgin? Did he understand what that meant? How could he? And how could she ever satisfy him? It would be a disaster for them both.
Moshe was right, Sarah thought ruefully. I am an alte moyd. What do I know about men and women?
The phone in the shop rang. It was Taylor, calling from Miami, telling her that he was about to meet with a man who might know Czartoryski, asking her if she had discovered anything new. She told him she had not. He told her about meeting Teddy Lansky, the widow of a famous gangster. Sarah had never heard of him.
“Didn’t you see The Godfather?” Taylor asked.
“No,” she said. She found it hard to pay attention to his words. All she heard was the warmth in his voice, and all she could listen to was her own inner sense saying, Sarah Kalman, you’re a fool.
“I have to go now, Dov,” she said. “My mother isn’t feeling well, and I have to help her get ready.”
“I’m sorry,” she heard Taylor say. “Give her my best. Gut Shabbos, Sarah. I miss you already.”
“It’s not Shabbos yet,” said Sarah.
There was a silence, and Sarah wondered if he was waiting for her to say that she missed him, too. But that’s precisely what will get you in trouble, she told herself sternly. But she did miss him. And she was just about to say so when Taylor said, “All right. I’ll call you when I get back.”
“All right,” said Sarah, hanging up, furious with herself for sounding cold when she didn’t mean to be and furious with Taylor for making her feel that way. And then it occurred to her that there might be a way to get her hands on the Satmarer rebbe’s personal history. He could not deny it to his son-in-law-to-be, the Lubavitcher rebbe’s adopted son, Adam Seligson.
There is something you can do right, she told herself. There is a way you can help Dov Taylor.
Feeling somewhat buoyed, she closed up the shop and began walking her well-worn path home, enjoying the feel of her community getting ready to close down and turn in on itself in celebration. But as she was figuring out how best to ask her father for help in approaching Adam Seligson, again she heard that voice in her head, her own voice:
Sarah Kalman, it said, you are a fool.
Chapter 56 International Hotel
Miami
Saturday, October 26
DOV TAYLOR SAT in the sauna connected to the health club on the twelfth floor of the International Hotel overlooking Biscayne Bay, breathing in the fumes of Jan Pleesis’s Scotch and water. Taylor had not been to an AA meeting since he’d arrived in Miami, and he was beginning to feel antsy. Once, at a meeting, he had heard someone describe his alcoholism as doing push-ups in the next room, and now Taylor could feel his own disease breathing heavily. He resolved to find a meeting as soon as he finished with Pleesis.
Teddy Lansky had been as good as her word. Soon after Taylor had left her and returned to his hotel, the phone had rung and a man with a thick accent that Taylor could not place had been introducing himself. They’d arranged to meet at the hotel this morning, and Pleesis had arrived exactly on time.
A huge, bald, red-faced Afrikaner with hands the size of baseball mitts, Pleesis was obviously a drinker, and obviously suffering, his eyelids at half-staff behind his horn-rimmed glasses, his hands shaking. “This joint got a sauna, mate?” Pleesis had asked as soon as they had shaken hands. “A sweat and some firewater will put me back on my feet, and then we can have a nice chitchat about my favorite subject.”
“Diamonds?” Taylor had asked.
“No, mate. Lunch.”
Pleesis poured himself two tall Scotch and waters from the courtesy bar in Taylor’s room and toasted Taylor’s health in Afrikaans: “Gesunheid.” Pleesis swallowed one drink at a gulp and took the other with him into the sauna.
Now, the dry, superheated air was working on the drink, filling the redwood paneled sauna with the peaty smell of Scotch.
“Not a drinking man, eh?” Pleesis asked.
“No,” said Taylor.
“But you were, right?”
“I was.”
“Never met a cop who wasn’t,” said Pleesis. “Couldn’t handle it, eh?”
“That’s right. I couldn’t handle it.” Taylor was becoming increasingly annoyed by the man’s bluff heartiness, which he suspected was an act. Oh, well, thought Taylor, picturing Pleesis’s liver as a gray, fatty, alcohol-ravaged blob, he’ll be dead soon.
“Me neither,” said Pleesis. “But I’m sixty-five, retired, and don’t give a bloody fuck. Cheers.” Pleesis finished off his drink. “So,” he said, “my dear old darling Teddy tells me you’re looking for someone in IDB, a master criminal type.”
“IDB?”
“Illegal diamond business.”
“I think he stole a diamond, so if that puts him in the illegal diamond business…”
“No, mate. That just makes him a thief. IDB is mainly smuggling.”
“Was that your beat?”
“You mean when I was with IDSO?”
“What’s IDSO?”
“You don’t know anything, do you mate? Babe in the woods, eh? Everybody knows IDSO. That’s the Syndicate’s International Diamond Security Organization, the best bloody cops in the world. Say, you think they’d bring a man a drink in the sauna?”
“You could try.”
“Think I will. I’m starting to feel human again, and I like it. Back in a jiff.”
Taylor watched Pleesis’s mottled back disappear through the sauna door. He wiped the sweat out of his eyes with a towel. Christ, it was hot. Personally he preferred steam baths. Steam baths made him think of old Jews in Coney Island, sitting around and complaining; saunas conjured up blond, big-breasted Swedish girls rushing out of the heat pink and naked to pelt each other with snowballs and whip each other’s bottoms with birch branches.
He shook his head to get rid of the Nordic bimbos. I’m wasting my time with this old lush, he thought.
He imagined Sarah Kalman sitting in the back of her shop, a book on her lap. He could always summon up a vivid image of her. What does that tell you? he asked himself. It tells you that you’ve got a hard-on for the rabbi’s daughter, he answered, and you’re an idiot. Haven’t you figured out that even if Sarah were interested in you, a relationship would be impossible? And if you haven’t figured it out, she has. She wasn’t too thrilled about you calling her, was she?
Taylor shifted on his towel. He felt drained.
Pleesis returned with another drink and sat down. “They got a bar right in the club, God bless ’em,” he said, taking a big swallow. “So, the thief you’re looking for, he got a name?”
“Czartoryski. I don’t have a first name.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. Tell me about the diamond.”
Taylor felt a wave of nausea sweep over him. He took a swallow of hot air. “There’s not a lot I can tell you,” he began, and then stopped. Black-and-purple blobs began chasing each other around the sauna. Lie down, he told himself. It’s cooler on the floor.
He closed his eyes and saw the diamond, shining like the sun. Purple clouds drifted across it. And then he saw Josep Czartoryski’s sneering face, and then Czartoryski turned into Pleesis.
“You all right, mate?”
Taylor realized he was lying on the floor. Pleesis put a meaty palm on his chest. “Don’t rush it, son. Take it easy. It’s cooler on the floor.”
