When the vests were completed and the costumes ready, the two young men became serious. Deadly serious.
“I think we should pray first,” Sam said.
He reached under his bed and unrolled the two prayer rugs he kept there, keeping the second because Al seemed to spend more time at Sam’s house than at his own.
They knelt on the rugs and chanted, alternating between leaning with their foreheads on the rug and sitting up straight. After ten minutes they stopped and stood, then helped each other dress.
The vests were heavy to lift but comfortable enough to wear once the weight was carried by their shoulders. They put on white shirts, like in the photos, over the vests, then black pants, black socks and black shoes. They pinned the hair locks on each other, then put on their hats and, finally, the black coats.
Then they stood a few feet apart, staring at each other.
“You look like such a Jew,” Sam said, shocked at the transformation of his friend’s appearance. “You really do.”
Al Farouk, too, was surprised at his friend’s appearance. “This is going to work,” he said. “People are going to think we’re a couple of Jews.”
Sam looked at his watch, remembering for a moment that it was a birthday present from his parents.
“It’s four thirty now,” he said. “We can get to the malls in forty-five minutes. Let’s give ourselves a half hour in case there’s traffic and to get set up. We blow the bombs at six thirty. The food courts ought to be packed then. We stand on a table, give some speech about Israel, shout out something that sounds like Hebrew and then—”
“And then we find out whether there really is a Paradise,” his friend finished for him.
“Well, whether or not there is Paradise,” Sam said, “we’re sure gonna create some hell for the Jews we leave behind. Let’s go, brother.”
They walked downstairs and out the front door to their separate cars, each holding his breath when the cars hit bumps in the road.
CHAPTER 45
After circling the same block three times, Ben Shapiro identified Judy Katz’s building and spotted her sitting on the stone steps leading to the front door. He honked his horn. She stood, waving.
Katz did not look like the crime-busting prosecutor. Dressed in decidedly unlawyerly jeans and a floppy, bright-yellow cotton tank top, Katz could have passed for one of the college students crammed into luxury apartments in her neighborhood. Her long black hair was in a ponytail sprouting through the hole in the back of her baseball cap, a cap that bore a Star of David on the front, above the words Camp Tikvah.
She tossed her L.L.Bean duffel bag into the back and sat in the passenger seat.
“I can’t tell you how excited I am about this,” she said.
“Well, thanks for coming down a day early,” Shapiro said. “I got drafted to stand by in case there are any last-minute legal hassles.”
Shapiro smiled. This was something entirely new for him. Despite several temptations, he had never been unfaithful to his wife—a few phone sex sessions and porn films while he was on out-of-town trips, maybe, but that did not count as infidelity in his book. Shapiro didn’t know where this escapade with Katz was going to lead, but he was surprised at how easy it was for him to be attracted to this young woman and at how she, for some reason he could not comprehend, seemed to be attracted to him.
The expectation that he would return to an empty house and that this separation was for real did little to hold him back. This could be the world’s fastest rebound romance, he thought. He didn’t realize that, more often than not, such rebounds involved overlaps rather than a gap.
“You look ready for a political demonstration,” Shapiro said to Katz. “Did you bring your gas mask?”
A troubled expression clouded her face.
“Was I supposed to?” she asked. “Shit, we had a shelf of them in the tactical room at work, you know. I could have grabbed one.”
Shapiro laughed. “No, no, I was kidding. I had one in college, government surplus. It never worked. I became a connoisseur of crowd control gas back then. There was tear gas. You dripped water or Visine in your eyes for that. Pepper gas. Hated that stuff. You never ever rubbed your eyes when they used that stuff. It caused more irritation. And, of course, there was that favorite when the pigs wanted to get nasty with you, CN gas. That made you puke your guts out. Didn’t feel much like taking over the dean’s office with a face full of CN, I’ll tell you.”
Shapiro saw the shocked look on the young woman’s face.
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “I’ve been accused more than once of never outgrowing college. And also of telling far too many stories.”
“You’re like a living history lesson,” Katz said, with a sly grin. “I dressed as a hippie for Halloween once.”
“Ouch,” Shapiro said, placing his hand over his heart. “That one hurt.”
They both laughed. Levi turned the car onto the Massachusetts Turnpike. “I figure we can get there in about eight hours,” he said. “I have an iron bladder, so let me know when you want to stop for a break.”
They rode in silence for several minutes. Shapiro glanced at the woman sitting to his right. He smiled at the clichéd thought that she could be his daughter. But she sure isn’t, he added to himself, noticing a pale, untanned spot high on her left arm. She noticed his glance.
“Laser surgery,” she said, tapping the spot with her right hand. “A tattoo. A dare.” Katz grinned, staring straight ahead through the windshield.
Much as he wondered about that tattoo, Shapiro lacked the nerve to ask what image could have been so embarrassing to a thirty-one-year-old woman that she’d had it surgically removed.
He tried another topic.
“So, what happened at work? Have you quit, or did Arnie Anderson fire you first?”
“Actually, I haven’t officially quit, or been fired yet,” she said. “I’ve been trying to set up a meeting with Arnie for days, but he keeps putting me off. We’re scheduled to meet Monday morning. That’s when I’ll hand in my badge.”
“I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that conversation,” Shapiro said. “My feeling is that he’ll be relieved to have you go. Arnie’s not a bad guy, but these cases have put him in a tough situation.”
“Tough situation for lots of people,” Katz said. “The story is that the Queen quit over these cases.”
“Good for her,” Shapiro said. “That’s half the problem now; people know right from wrong, but when their ass, or their job, is on the line, they follow orders now and hope to justify them later. Be sure and take good notes at that meeting with Arnie. I’ll be curious.”
They sat in silence as the car roared down the highway. Shapiro, again, was the first to break the silence.
“Damn,” he said. “I forgot a phone call I was going to make before I left. You’re going to have to pretend you’re not here. This is going to be a confidential discussion. No sneezing or coughing, okay?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” she said.
When Shapiro pressed the telephone icon on the steering wheel, the navigation screen switched to a telephone dial. He scrolled down his recent call list to Suffolk County district attorney Patrick McDonough.
“Ben, thought you’d be down in DC waving a sign,” the district attorney said, laughing. “Aren’t you the head Jewish lawyer or something these days?”
“Actually, Pat, I’m in the car on the Mass Pike heading for Washington right now. I wanted to check in with you about that kid I’m representing. Mandelbaum. You said you’d give the idea of turning him over to the feds some thought.”
“Oh, I thought about it all right, Ben,” McDonough said. “For about five seconds. That kid’s a murderer, no two ways about it. I saw how the feds rounded all those people up and then sent them home with a stern lecture. No, Ben, it’s not going to work that way on this one. People are dead, ten people. It’s too bad he’s the only one who’s gonna pay, but he’s all I’ve got. I think I’ll hang onto him.”