Sam had removed his glasses. The disease had not caused any outward change; as ever, his eyes were a glossy brown, verging on black. They trembled, half closed, as he murmured.
Sam pulled him in and gave him a wet kiss on the forehead. “I love you.”
Twice in one week.
Was he dying?
Jacob filled one of Bina’s ceramic goblets to the brim with red wine, setting it carefully in Sam’s hands. The wine sloshed across Sam’s knuckles as he recited kiddush, dripping onto the white tablecloth and diffusing, a lavender diaspora. They drank, washed their hands with another of Bina’s cups, and sat to break bread: hunks of challah dipped in salt.
Electing to skip the cold soup, they went straight to the main meal. Sam insisted on playing waiter, setting out platters of roast chicken, sweet potato, rice pilaf, cucumber salad.
“What it lacks in temperature, it makes up for in quantity.”
It was indeed a lot of food, and Jacob felt touched. His father didn’t have money to spare. Before his weakening vision had forced him to stop, and he’d taken on his so-called superintendent duties, Sam had scrounged a living doing freelance bookkeeping and tax prep, usually for elderly neighbors and always at a deep discount. His indifference to the material world was, like his continuing devotion to Bina, a source of admiration and frustration for Jacob.
“Everything’s delicious, Abba.”
“Can I get you anything else?”
“You can sit down and eat, please.” Jacob forked a piece of Jerusalem kugel, sweet and peppery and springy to the touch. “So. What’s up?”
Sam shrugged. “The usual. Scribbling.”
“What’re you working on?”
“You really want to know?”
“I’m asking.”
“Maybe you’re just being polite.”
“You say that like there’s something wrong with being polite.”
Sam smiled. “Since you ask, it’s a supercommentary on the Maharal’s Chiddushei Aggados to Sanhedrin, with special attention given to the themes of theodicy and reincarnation.”
“I smell bestseller,” Jacob said.
“Oh, definitely. I’m thinking we get Tom Cruise to play the Maharal.”
Sam was ordained — although he wouldn’t permit anyone to call him rabbi — and not a few of the books piled up around the apartment bore his authorship: lengthy, esoteric tracts written in longhand in composition books. Whenever he completed one, Abe Teitelbaum paid to print a few dozen copies, which Sam then sold.
That was the theory. Invariably, Sam ended up giving the books away to anyone who showed the slightest interest, trying, unsuccessfully, to reimburse Abe out of his own pocket.
As Sam launched into a summary of the latest work, his elegant pianist fingers flying, Jacob fixed on a smile and set his head on auto-nod. He’d heard most of the ideas before, or some version of them. His father considered Rabbi Judah Loew, the Maharal, his cardinal commentator, and had been talking and writing about him as long as Jacob could remember. The guy could do no wrong. The guy had special powers. The guy was the gadol hador — the greatest Torah mind of his generation. He was a lamed-vavnik, one of the thirty-six hidden righteous men who sustained the world. He was Abraham and Einstein and Babe Ruth and the Green Lantern rolled into one, at once mythical and intimate, like some highly exotic fruit hanging off the far end of the family tree; the fourth cousin who never shows up to reunions because he’s building affordable solar-powered housing in Guatemala or pearl diving off Sri Lanka, and whose absence turns him into the sole topic of conversation.
One of the few recollections Jacob had of Bina showing a maternal instinct was when Sam decided to read to him from a book about the Maharal’s creation of the golem of Prague. The cover art featured a monster with glowing, jaundiced eyes, stretching a bearish hand after some hapless, unseen victim. It had scared the bejesus out of Jacob, then four or five. He’d run in his pajamas to Bina, who gathered him up and turned on Sam ferociously.
Read him a normal book, like a normal child.
In hindsight, it did seem a questionable choice for a bedtime story.
A shrill electronic plaint interrupted his thoughts and paused Sam’s monologue. Jacob fumbled out the sat phone. He was sure he’d turned it off. He flicked the ringer switch, but the phone shrieked a second time.
“You should get that,” Sam said.
Jacob flicked the switch back. The goddamned thing kept ringing. “It can wait.”
“It might be important.”
Hot with shame, Jacob tripped through the cardboard maze, stepped out to the patio.
“Hello?”
“Detective Lev? Phil Ludwig.”
“Oh — hi.”
“I’m catching you at a bad time?”
“No, it’s, it’s fine,” Jacob said, eyeing Sam through the ragged lace curtain. His father had laid his cutlery across the edge of his plate and was sitting with his hands crossed on his shallow stomach, gazing placidly into oblivion. “Thanks for getting back to me.”
“Yeah. What can I do for you?”
“I caught a case that relates to one of your old ones, and I wanted to pick your brains.”
“What case would that be?”
“The Night Creeper,” Jacob said.
Ludwig said nothing for a solid ten seconds. When he next spoke, his tone was guarded — close to hostile. “Is that a fact.”
“Seems that way.”
“Relates how?”
“I think I may have your offender,” Jacob said.
Ludwig exhaled. It sounded labored.
“Detective?” Jacob asked.
“One second.”
The phone clattered down, and Jacob heard grunting, like the guy had accidentally swallowed a cigarette butt.
“Detective? You okay?”
Ludwig came back on. “Yeah.”
“Is everything all right?”
“Well — I mean, Christ. I don’t know. You tell me.”
“I was hoping to swing by and talk to you,” Jacob said.
“You have him? I — shit. I thought you were gonna tell me you had another DB.”
“I do,” Jacob said. “Your offender.”
“Jesus Christ,” Ludwig said. “You’re kidding.”
“I wouldn’t kid about that. Tomorrow okay?”
They arranged to meet at eleven a.m. Before they got off, Jacob again asked if Ludwig was feeling well.
“Don’t worry about me. Listen up: you’d better not be yanking my chain here.”
“Hand to God,” Jacob said.
“Cause you are, I’ll break your fucking neck,” Ludwig said.
Chapter sixteen
“I apologize,” Jacob said, reseating himself. “It’s this new phone. I tried to silence it, but for some reason it won’t turn off. Anyhow, sorry. I hate to disrupt your Shabbos.”
“You’re not. It’s absolutely permitted. Your work is no different from a doctor’s.”
“Nobody’s going to die if I don’t answer the phone.”
“Can you say that with certainty?”
“In this case, yes.” Jacob resumed eating, noticing that Sam hadn’t taken more than a couple bites of his own food. “Abba? You’re not sick, are you?”