Fearless stood up and said, “Come on, Paris.”
Ari stood up too.
“No,” Manly said. “Sit down, both of you.”
There wasn’t much give in either of the gladiators. So I asked a question.
“Where you guys from?”
“We are foreigners,” Manly said.
“From Israel, I bet.”
That somehow broke the standoff. Both Fearless and Ari took their seats.
“We are here to reclaim the wealth of our people,” Lev said. His strained voice warbled with emotion that he bore like an open wound.
“Lev —” Manly began, but he was stopped by an upheld hand. I was surprised to see that the pale kid was the senior statesman among the bunch.
“This man, this Abraham Zimmerman, he helped the Nazis to steal it, and we are here to get it back.”
“Steal what?” I asked. I was pretty sure of the answer, but I wanted to see what they would say.
“They took everything,” Lev said. “The gold from our teeth, the hair from our heads. They took our pocket watches and our wallets. And if you were rich and you hid your jewels and paintings and furs, then Zimmerman was sent in to sell your freedom for what you had hidden away. He and his Nazi friends hid them again…” Lev’s words trailed off, and he stared into space.
“Where is Zimmerman?” Fearless said, always wanting to cut to the chase.
“We don’t know,” Lev said after making the grimace of a man swallowing a bitter draft.
“What’s this all about?” I asked the pale kid. Somehow I felt a connection with him.
“Zimmerman is a Jew…,” Lev began.
When Ari heard this, he spat on the floor.
“We already know the part about Zimmerman robbing the rich Jews who thought they could buy their way out of the slaughterhouse,” I said.
Lev caught the last word and looked into my eyes.
“Yes,” he said. “Many of those wealthy men had converted their money into art treasures and gold. David Tannenbaum found out about the sale —”
“— of those jewelry-making tools that the Rothschild’s jewelers had at one time,” I said, finishing the sentence.
“He knew that these tools had belonged to his nephew and so contacted our government,” Lev said, continuing, “but they told him that we could do nothing without proof.”
“Why don’t you just go over to those accountants and make ’em give it up?” Fearless suggested.
Squat, muscle-bound Ari grunted in agreement.
“The American government frowns on agents of foreign powers threatening their citizens,” Lev explained. “We have no proof that this property was stolen. There were only thirty families that these Nazis and their dog, Zimmerman, took from. And they are all dead. The treasures were private property, and the papers of ownership were part of the devil’s bargain. Our actions must be beyond criticism. So we ask for help from those who sympathize with our goals.”
“That include hirin’ a crooked cop to scare Fanny Tannenbaum and kill Conrad Till?” I asked, none too friendly.
“Do you know Israel?” Lev asked.
“What you read in the papers,” I said.
“We made our own nation,” the pale leader intoned. “We have taken back our lives and our history even though they have tried to destroy us all.”
“If you and Sol believe in the same thing, why didn’t you just ask him for the money?” I knew about Israel; I knew about Marcus Garvey too, and I didn’t have the heart to hear about Garvey’s dream coming true in another man’s world.
“We did,” Lev said. “We did, but like I told you, we are not official. We could not prove to him who we were, and no official of our government would vouch for us.”
“If he didn’t believe you, then why should we?” I asked.
“All you have to believe is our money,” Ari said derisively.
“What about Till?” Fearless asked.
Lev brought the upturned palms of his hands up to the level of his shoulders. “We read that he died of a heart attack.”
“You know better than that,” I said.
“We are not murderers, Mr. Minton. We would not kill a man who has not committed a crime against us. The policeman was, how do you say, suggested to us by people we know. We did not trust him. We did not tell him to kill. We only wanted the bond that Fanny Tannenbaum gave to Leon Douglas.”
“Okay,” I said. “Now here you guys is livin’ in the lap’a luxury, fresh off the boat from Israel, don’t know a damn thing and ain’t got no friends to help you, except one crooked cop; but still you go lookin’ for a bond changed hands between Sol Tannenbaum and Leon Douglas’s girlfriend. That don’t even add up to numbers, man.”
John Manly spoke up then. “Mr. Latham was not an honest man, but he was a good detective. When David Tannenbaum was still in prison, the good sergeant found out that Leon Douglas was his protector. When Leon was released, Latham became suspicious. He was already keeping an eye on Hedva and David through a friend of his who was a policeman in their neighborhood.”
Ari muttered something in Fanny’s tongue. I didn’t understand a single word except for svartza.
“You ain’t listenin’ to me, brother,” Fearless said. “We want the dude caused it all; we want him to pay for what he did. Money’s nice — we could all use some, I’m sure — but this is about making the traitor Jew pay for what he did.”
“But we don’t know where he is,” Manly insisted.
“If we did, we would have him already,” Lev added.
“Are you after the thief or the money he stole?” Fearless impressed me with his question.
Lev hesitated a moment too long before replying, “Both of course.”
“You tell us where to find Zimmerman, and we give you the suicide note,” Fearless said.
The men were all silent. I couldn’t tell the mood of the room, so I decided to concentrate on the kid. If a fight broke out, I figured I could take him — at least I could try.
“He’s with his old Nazi overboss, Otto Holderlin,” John Manly added. “If we knew where he was, we would demand his arrest. But I doubt that we will find him.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“From what we could find out, his accountants were moving his monies to Equador, Brazil, and Panama. Herr Zimmerman is moving south for the weather.”
“How much you pay for the money if we lead you to it?” I asked.
“Thirty thousand dollars.”
“But you don’t get a thing,” Fearless said to the Israelis, “till we see about Zimmerman.”
32
“THAT SOUNDS pretty okay, huh, Paris?” Fearless said on our way down the block to our car.
“What?”
“Thirty thousand. Even split three ways you could still start a new bookstore with that kinda scratch.”
“That was just talk, Fearless. We don’t know where the money is. And what the fuck were you doin’ in there anyways?”
“Pushin ’em a little,” Fearless said almost innocently. “Pushin ’em to work with us on this thing.”
“Why you after Zimmerman? You don’t know him. You ain’t even ever met him.”
“It’s Zimmerman had Sol killed.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes I do, Paris. And he gonna pay.”
“Pay how?”
“With blood and money, his freedom or his life,” Fearless said.
“And what’s all this stuff about money?”
“It ain’t about money, it’s about the man who destroyed Fanny and Sol.”
“Morris killed Fanny.”
“’Cause Zimmerman drove him crazy.”
“What does that have to do with you tellin’ them spies up there that we know where the money is? Now they gonna be after us.”