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.