So Michael had not seen Yossi Cohen follow me down to the beach. He did not witness my taking Cohen at gunpoint into the shed and emerging from there alone.
"Michael," I said, "if you don't come with me to the station, I will tell the police everything I know. It won't be enough for a conviction. It may not even be enough for an arrest. But it will pique their interest. They'll have their eye on you. You won't be able to visit your son's grave ever again."
His lips curled into a bitter smile. "That's an empty threat, Adam. After all, if I'm locked up in a cell, I won't be visiting his grave either."
"No," I said. "But I will."
He stared at me without saying a word.
"If you come with me to the station and make a full confession, I will visit Judah's grave every two months while you're incarcerated. I will lay flowers and a stone on his grave. I will recite the kadish. I will do those things, Michael, over a headstone that bears Judah's true name, and those of his father and mother."
I paused, scratching the number on my arm.
"I'm giving you a chance to do right by Talia, by Judah, and by Willie Ackerland and his mother. If you don't confess, it will be hard for them to be reunited. Malka may not believe that the boy she's been raising is not really your son. What would Talia want you to do, Michael? What would she tell you to do?"
He didn't answer for a long while. Outside the chirping of a songbird was drowned by the guttural bark of an angry dog. A woman in a neighboring building called out something in Yiddish. Light fell across the bed in the corner, where I was sure Michael had spent endless nightmare-filled nights. The apartment no longer felt cold. I was filled with a bleak sadness.
After what might have been five minutes, Michael reached down, picked up the beer bottle, brought it to his lips, and drained it. He wiped his lips and placed the bottle on the floor once more. Then he stood up.
"All right," he said. "Let's go."
34
I had worried Henrietta would not look kindly on my suggestion that she share her story with a reporter, but she jumped at the idea. "This way my Jacob's name will never be forgotten," she said.
The three of us met in Café Tamar the day after I walked Michael to the police station, after I went to see Henrietta and told her I'd found her son. I waited outside for Henrietta and introduced her to Birnbaum when she arrived. I had already filled him in as to the basic outline of the case—the motive, the perpetrator, the reason behind the method of killing and the disfigurement of the bodies—and his police contacts were sure to provide him with additional information. It was a sanitized, much-abbreviated outline, of course. I had held some things back—Mira Roth's desire for vengeance, Manny Orrin and his pictures, Alon Davidson and his assault on me, and Mr. Strauss and the assassin he had hired to kill me. The latter had a lengthy criminal record. Reading between the lines of various newspaper reports, it was clear that the police had no leads as to who killed him.
If Birnbaum had caught on that I was withholding information, he did not voice any protest. On the contrary, he was as happy as a boy on his birthday who had just been gifted the item he'd most longed for.
"This is a great story, Adam," he said, grinning widely as he perused the notes he'd taken of our conversation. "Perhaps the best of my career. They'll talk about this in the cafés on Dizengoff for weeks."
Birnbaum held onto Henrietta's hand for longer than he had any business to, and for a second it looked like he was about to bend over at the waist and kiss it. Instead, he gave her hand a gentle pat before releasing it, and, in a warm, compassionate voice I would not have believed he possessed, said, "I know it's not easy to talk about such hard times and experiences, Mrs. Ackerland. I appreciate you meeting with me today."
I left them so they could talk in private and took a table at the opposite end of the café, reading a western I had picked up from Goldberg's store earlier that day. They sat together for more than an hour, Henrietta doing most of the talking, Birnbaum scribbling feverishly in his notebook. Occasionally, they'd pause when Henrietta choked up or had to wipe away her tears. Finally, I saw them both rise from their chairs and shake hands again. I came over and asked Henrietta if she was all right. Her eyes were red and she looked exhausted, but she nodded and said that she was fine, happy. "Tomorrow I shall see my son. It's what I've been dreaming about for ten long, lonely years."
Outside, I hailed a passing taxi and held the backseat door open for her. She slipped inside, then leaned out and grabbed my arm. "Thank you, Adam. From the bottom of my heart, thank you."
"You're welcome," I said, uncomfortable with her gratitude, then swung the door shut and tapped twice on the roof for the driver to go.
Back inside Café Tamar, I found Birnbaum with a ruminative look in his eyes.
He said, "First impression, she looked so brittle I thought she might come apart at any second. Now I suspect that she's made of steel. An incredible woman. Utterly incredible."
"If I didn't know better, Shmuel, I might think you truly care about her."
Birnbaum draped his pudgy face in a hurt expression. "Is that what you think of me, Adam? That I am heartless?"
"On the contrary. I know you have a heart. But only for stories."
"How little you know me. It's true that I love finding and writing stories more than anything else, but I like people, too. Read my columns; you won't find one in which I was nasty to anyone. Not more than they absolutely deserved. Some of my colleagues make a sport out of eviscerating people in print. I don't. What I like most of all are stories that bring to light the indomitable human spirit, stories of triumph over adversity, stories of resilience and resurgence. Stories such as Henrietta Ackerland's. Stories such as yours, dear Adam."
I got a cigarette out, but didn't light it, just rolled it between thumb and forefinger. "Michael Shamir doesn't deserve to be eviscerated in the paper."
Birnbaum inclined his bald head. "No? He killed a woman and stole a child. I think that's more than enough reason to disembowel him, figuratively speaking of course." He narrowed his eyes at me. "Why do you care about him?"
Because I owe him for rescuing me from Alon Davidson, I thought. But if I said that, Birnbaum would demand elaboration, and I did not want to get into that. I also couldn't tell him that I feared Mira's reaction when she read Birnbaum's column filleting her hero in the newspaper she hated.
I said, "Because he did some good things. As a soldier and in the Irgun."
"The latter won't do him any good as far as my editors at Davar are concerned. The Irgun is our political foe, Adam, you know that. They won't allow me to squander an opportunity to tarnish the Irgun's reputation." He cast a quick look around, then leaned toward me, lowering his voice to little more than a whisper. "Listen, Adam, despite being a supporter of Mapai, I don't hate the Irgun. In fact—and if you repeat this to anyone, I'll vehemently deny it—I rather admire them. They're fanatics, but you won't find tougher, more dedicated warriors. Without them, we might still have the British lording over us." He leaned back, examining my face. "I ask again, why do you care about Shamir? Some sort of camaraderie between soldiers?"
"Something like that," I said.
"Aha," said Birnbaum. "Somehow I don't think that's quite it, Adam. I think you're hiding something, which in turn makes me very curious."
"Stop digging, Shmuel. There's nothing to find."
"If you say so, Adam." He tapped his chin with two fingers. "Normally I wouldn't let it go at that, but today I'm feeling generous. This story you brought me has made me rather fond of you. Regarding Michael Shamir, I do plan on mentioning his role in the Irgun of course, and his military service. But I can tell you right now that neither would negate his crimes in the eyes of the public."