“Emily, what are you doing here?” Shapiro said. “Where’s Sally? Where’s Adam?” He looked toward the stairs leading to his bedroom. “Are they sleeping?”
His mother-in-law whimpered.
“What the hell is going on, Emily?”
“Ben, oh, poor Ben,” the woman said, tears now running down her cheeks. “Oh, Ben, they’re gone. They’re both gone. I’m so sorry for you. Oh, Ben, it’s such a tragedy.”
“What do you mean, gone? Gone where? Where are they, Emily?”
“Ben,” she replied. “They’re dead, poor Sally and little Adam. They were at that… that mall, that shopping mall when that horrible bomb went off, when that goddamn Jew set off—” She stopped abruptly. “I kept calling the house but she never answered. I called all through the night.
“Then, just yesterday, two police officers came to the house. They asked me if I was Sally Spofford’s mother. They asked if I knew where you were and I said I thought you’d gone away for a few days. Sally told me you insisted on going to that Jewish demonstration in Washington. I didn’t tell the police that, of course.
“And they showed me Sally’s bag, that ugly Betsy Karen bag with the big yellow daisy on it that she bought last year. Ben, it was all torn up. It was horrible, black marks all over it. Then they told me they’d recovered what they believed was her body, at the North Shore Mall, at the food court. Oh, Ben, they said they weren’t sure it was her, they couldn’t identify the body. They asked me to come to the morgue and I did and it was her—at least I’m pretty sure it was her. I hardly looked.”
Shapiro grabbed the woman by the shoulders.
“Adam,” he shouted. “What about Adam?”
“Oh, Ben,” the woman cried. “I asked them where Adam was. I explained that she had a son. His name was Adam. They told me there were some children they couldn’t identify, five children. And Ben, I had to look at all of them, those horrible, broken bodies of children. Adam was the last one they showed me. He looked so beautiful, so peaceful. Then they pulled the cover all the way off his face and, oh, Ben, he had no mouth, no chin.”
The woman collapsed onto the sofa. Shapiro stood in front of her, shaking. White spots appeared in front of his eyes, dancing across the surface of his eyeballs. The next thing he knew, he was on the floor in a heap, cold, clammy sweat on his forehead. He sat on the floor, unable to move, his heart about to explode.
Shapiro startled from the sound of somebody pounding on the front door. He stumbled to the door, his knees weak and trembling.
“Who the hell is it?” he yelled.
“FBI, Mr. Shapiro. Open the door.”
He turned the porch light on and opened the door. Two men stood there. Without asking, they walked past him into the hall. One man spoke.
“Ben Shapiro,” he said, holding a photograph of Shapiro’s driver’s license. “We’ve been waiting for you for quite a while, Mr. Shapiro. We need to speak with you. Right away. It’s important.”
“You might say it’s a matter of national security, Mr. Shapiro,” the other man said, moving to stand beside Shapiro.
“This is the wrong time for this,” he said softly. “My wife and child have been murdered. I can’t do this right now.”
He reached for the door.
“You have to leave now,” he said.
One of the men placed his palm on the door and shoved it closed.
“You don’t understand, Mr. Shapiro,” he said. “We’ve been sitting out there all day and halfway through the night. We’re not going to do this some other time. We’re going to talk now, right now.”
The other man placed his hand on Shapiro’s upper arm.
Shapiro gestured with his head toward the left, toward the kitchen, away from the family room.
“We can sit in there,” he said. “I’ll make coffee. I need it.”
“Fine,” the first agent said. “That’s better.”
Shapiro turned toward the kitchen, then stopped, frozen. He looked up at the men. FBI, they would know—maybe Sally’s mother was wrong. “My wife, my son,” he mumbled. “Did they really die?”
The two men glanced at one another, surprised. “We don’t know about your wife,” one man answered. “But we know all about you.”
“We’re told, buddy, that you can identify the Israeli soldiers held on Cape Cod,” the other agent said. “That is correct?”
Shapiro smiled wearily. “So that’s what this is all about,” he said, remembering his telephone conversation with the district attorney about his client, Howie Mandelbaum.
“I can’t identify anybody,” Shapiro said. “I told District Attorney McDonough that my client, Mr. Mandelbaum, theoretically he might be able to identify certain persons who were on those ships who were affiliated with the Israel Defense Forces. Theoretically, I said. And that was in return for consideration concerning the criminal charges. That’s what I said. It was all theoretical.” His hands placed quotation marks around the last word.
The agent to Shapiro’s right pushed him against the wall.
“Cut the crap, asshole,” the agent shouted. “We aren’t dealing with some state crime shoot-em-up here. This is serious. National security. We aren’t playing little plea bargain games, not now. Is that clear? The DA said you could ID these people. Not your client. Or should I say your former client?” He looked across at the other agent.
The agent continued, “Mr. Mandelbaum, most unfortunately for all of us, took a flyer in the middle of the night last night. He is no longer with us.”
“A flyer?” Shapiro said, looking back and forth from one man to the other.
“Yeah, he played Superman,” the first agent said. “Off the fifth-tier balcony at Charles Street Jail. Either jumped or was tossed, not that it matters much either way. Broke his neck. Tragic. They say he was buck naked.”
“All that matters is that you are the only one who can ID those Jew soldiers who killed the Coasties. Even more than that, we’re told those soldiers might know something about the atom bomb the Jews smuggled into this country. You care about this country, don’t you, Mr. Shapiro? This is still your country, isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes, of course this is my country,” Shapiro said quickly, stunned by news of his client’s death. Shapiro remembered his last conversation with Mandelbaum. Maybe he did jump, he thought.
Sally. Adam. Too much death. His head spun. He sat at the kitchen table.
The second agent moved behind Shapiro. He grabbed the back of Shapiro’s chair and yanked it away from the table.
“Enough of this bullshit,” he said. “Get up. You’re coming with us. You’re going to ID those Jew soldiers and you and your buddies are going to tell us everything there is to know about this atom bomb.”
“Where are we going?” Shapiro asked. He wanted to close his eyes and find these two men gone. “This is all a mistake,” he said quietly. “I have no idea who the Israeli soldiers are. I never said I could pick them out. It was my client. He could do that. And I don’t know anything about any bombs, any atom bombs.”
The men grabbed his elbows and lifted him to a standing position.
“Where are you taking me?” Shapiro asked.
One of the agents grabbed Shapiro by the upper arm. “We’re going for a drive down to the cape. Camp Edwards. Look, buddy, we’re just the delivery guys. All we do is pick you up and drop you off for the experts down there. The experts are the ones who’ll be chatting with you.”
“Experts?” Shapiro asked.
“Yeah, the experts, the interrogators. Military interrogators. You heard the president, didn’t you? You’re an enemy combatant, buddy. We turn you over to the military and they make you talk. That’s how it works.”