My bedroom walls were adorned by nothing but two empty nails that had been hammered there by some previous lodger. Pictures must have hung on them once, and I sometimes let my imagination paint them in my mind. But I had never bought new pictures of my own, so the nails stood out, small and black and forlorn, like an empty house hoping to be filled.
I looked at the blank walls and asked myself whether it was time to find a picture or two. Truth be told, I never had a problem with the naked white walls, but maybe having a couple of pictures would make the room look a little less like a cell and more like a home.
Shaking my head to banish my foolish thoughts, I lowered my eyes to my box of valuables, my gaze lingering on the Luger. It had sharp, crude lines, and it glistened darkly under the light from the ceiling bulb. All guns are made for inflicting harm, but the Luger looked especially malevolent, like it wasn’t simply an inanimate object but one endowed with an evil spirit. Or maybe I was imagining it. Maybe it was the fact that this was a German gun, a favorite among those who had tormented me and murdered my family, that made me see things that weren’t there.
Should I take the gun with me tonight? I was not about to go unarmed, that was for sure. Nathan Frankel might end up being as nice a guy as Alphon had said he was, but he was also a criminal. He was unlikely to look kindly on my demanding that he give back the money he’d stolen from Mrs. Wasserman. There was a good chance he would resist with force, in which case Mrs. Wasserman might end up getting her wish, because whether he wanted to or not, he was going to return her money.
Normally, I would have taken the knife and left the Luger behind. The knife was the safer weapon. It was easier to control the sort of damage you did to your opponent with a knife, and it was easier to keep the police out of a knife fight than a shooting. The knife was also lighter, less bulky, and easier to carry than the Luger. On this occasion, though, I decided to bring the Luger along. If what Alphon had told me was true, it was possible Frankel would not be the only criminal in that card game. I could handle myself well enough in a one-on-one fight; going against multiple opponents was another matter. I might need to threaten them off, and the Luger was the perfect tool for that.
Even though I knew the gun was loaded, I rechecked the magazine. Full and ready to go. I stuck the Luger in the waistband of my pants, put the folding knife in my pocket, returned the box to its hidey-hole, set the false bottom, and stacked my linen on top of it.
I took a drink of water, and then I headed out.
6
I took a bus that let me out on Shalma Road and headed west toward the sea. Five minutes later, just as I got to Hashaon Square, with the clock tower at its center, lightning pierced the sky and thunder boomed and rain began falling hard. I turned my collar up, lowered my head to keep water out of my eyes, and quickened my step.
By the time I found the bar where Zalman Alphon had played cards with Nathan Frankel, my hair was matted to my scalp, my pants were drenched, and water had seeped past my collar and was making its way down my back. To add insult to injury, I managed to step into a puddle and turn my left shoe into a pond. In the paper that morning, the forecast had called for no precipitation that night. I wondered how many angry letters the editor would be getting this week. I hoped he would drown in them.
The bar took up the ground floor of a two-story building a stone’s throw away from the Port of Jaffa. The upper floor had a boarded-up window facing the street and bullet holes in its facade, remnants of the fighting that had taken place in Jaffa during the War of Independence.
The front door opened on a rectangular space with half a dozen rickety tables and a bar on the left. Two of the tables were taken by stoop-shouldered, grim-faced men who seemed intent on their beers and gloomy thoughts. There were mud tracks on the floor and grime on the window. It was one of those places where the customers didn’t care much about aesthetics or hygiene.
The place carried the scents of damp clothes, aged cigarette smoke, and fish in varying degrees of freshness. Probably the haunt of the fishermen who had their boats moored at nearby piers.
Behind the bar stood a tall bearded man with a toothpick in his mouth. He eyed me wordlessly while I scanned the faces of the patrons. All were much too old to be Nathan Frankel.
I took off my swamped shoe, shook water out of it, and put it back on. Still wet, but it would have to do. I wiped my face, crossed over to the bar, and bid the bartender good evening. He nodded in return, shifted the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other, and said, “Got a little wet there, I see.”
“A little,” I said. “It’ll save me having to wash my clothes.”
He nodded again. Maybe he appreciated my ability to see the good side of a bad situation. Or maybe he just liked moving his head up and down.
He said, “First time I see you around here.”
“That’s right. Heard good things about the place.”
His eyebrows shot up. He was clearly shocked by the very notion that someone would lavish praise on his workplace. “Yeah, who from?”
“Nathan Frankel.”
“You a friend of Nathan?”
“That’s right.”
He smiled. His teeth weren’t much to look at, but it was still a nice enough smile. “Name’s Fyodor.”
“Adam.”
He asked me what I’d have, and I said a beer would do nicely. He filled up a tall glass and set it on the bar. I let it sit. If I could avoid consuming anything this place served, so much the better.
“Nathan around?” I asked. “He told me there was a card game here tonight.”
Fyodor nodded again. “Up the stairs.” He gestured with his chin toward a closed door set in the rear wall. I paid for the beer and took it with me.
The door was made of wood that was flaking around the edges. Beyond rose a staircase, down which flowed the sound of male chatter and a wedge of yellow light. I left the beer on the lowest step and started climbing.
I mounted the stairs slowly, shifting the Luger from my waistband to my jacket pocket, my hand locked around the grip. My skin started tingling and I got to thinking that I was playing this all wrong.
I was acting with unwarranted haste. I didn’t have to barge in on their game like this. It was asking for trouble. I could head back down, take a table, and pretend to nurse my beer until Frankel and his friends called it a night. Then I might be able to talk to him alone.
Two reasons made me keep climbing those steps, one infantile and one rational. The infantile one was that the card game might go on for hours, and I was wet and cold. I wanted to get this over with so I could go home and dry off.
The rational reason was that if I stayed below, Fyodor might start wondering why I wasn’t heading upstairs to meet my good friend Nathan. He might decide that the prudent thing for him to do was to go warn him, and that was the one thing I wanted least of all. If I had one advantage, it was that Nathan Frankel did not know I was coming.
At the top of the stairs stood an open door and past it stretched a long room with a painted floor in alternating red and green squares. In the middle of the room was a large round table. Three men sat around it on straight-back chairs. On the table were cards, cash, ashtrays, glasses, and four bottles of alcohol in various stages of consumption. Above the table hung a glaring bare bulb on a long cord. Smoke drifted lazily around it like a moving wreath.
It didn’t take long for one of the men to notice me. He was stocky with a wide, square face and thick scar tissue over his close-set eyes. His nose had been busted multiple times and had been set inexpertly at least once. He had the look of a brute. Not smart but able and willing to employ his fists.