“She can’t eat,” Benito says. “No more shtekelehs.”
“That’s a shame.”
They’re through. Landsman gets up, slips the notebook back into his hip pocket, and feeds himself the last bite. He feels stronger and happier than he has in weeks or perhaps months. There is something in the death of Mendel Shpilman, a story to grab hold of, and it’s shaking the dust and spiders off him. Or else it’s the donut. They head for the door, but Benito puts a hand on Landsman’s arm.
“Why you don’t ask me anything else, Detective?”
“What would you like me to ask you?” Landsman frowns, then lights doubtfully on a question. “You heard something today, maybe? Something out of Verbov Island?” It’s hard to imagine but not inconceivable that word of Verbover displeasure over Landsman’s visit to the rebbe already would have reached Benito’s ears.
“Verbov Island? No, another thing. You still looking for the Zilberblat?”
Viktor Zilberblat is one of the eleven outstanding cases that Landsman and Berko are supposed to be re solving effectively. Zilberblat was stabbed to death last March outside of the Hofbrau tavern in the Nachtasyl, the old German quarter, a few blocks from here. The knife was small and dull, and the murder had an un tudied air.
“Somebody see the brother,” Benito Taganes says. “Rafi. Sneaking around.”
Nobody was sorry to see Viktor go, least of all his brother, Rafael. Viktor had abused Rafael, cheated him, humiliated him, and made free with his cash and his woman. After Viktor died, Rafael left town, whereabouts unknown. The evidence linking Rafael to the knife is inconclusive at best. Two semi reliable witnesses put him forty miles away from the Nachtasyl for two hours on either side of the likely time of his brother’s murder. But Rafi Zilberblat has a long and monotonous police record, and he will do very nicely, Landsman reflects, given the lowered standard of proof that the new policy implies.
“Sneaking where?” Landsman says. The informa tion is like a hot black mouthful of coffee. He can feel himself coiling around Rafael Zilberblat’s freedom like a hundred-pound snake.
“That Big Macher store, it’s gone now, up at Granite Creek. Somebody see him sneaking in and out of there. Carrying things. A can of propane. Maybe he living inside the empty store.”
“Thanks, Benny,” Landsman says. “I’ll check it out.” Landsman starts to let himself out of the apartment. Benito Taganes takes hold of his sleeve. He smooths the collar of Landsman’s overcoat with a paternal hand. He brushes away the crumbs of cinnamon sugar.
“Your wife,” he says. “Here again?”
“In all her glory.”
“Nice lady. Benny says hello.”
“I’ll tell her to drop by.”
“No, you don’t tell her nothing.” Benito grins. “Now she your boss.”
“She was always my boss,” Landsman says. “Now it’s just official.”
The grin winks out, and Landsman averts his gaze from the spectacle of Benito Taganes’s grieving eyes. Benito’s wife is a voiceless and shadowy little woman, but Miss Olivia in her heyday conducted herself like the boss of half the world.
“Better for you,” Benito says. “You need.”
21
Landsman straps an extra clip to his belt and drives out to the north end, past Halibut Point, where the city sputters and the water reaches across the land like the arm of a policeman. Just off the Ickes Highway, the wreck of a shopping center marks the end of the dream of Jewish Sitka. The push to fill every space from here to Yakovy with the Jews of the world gave out in this parking lot. There was no Permanent Status, no influx of new jewflesh from the bitter corners and dark alleys of Diaspora. The planned housing developments remain lines on blue paper, encumbering some steel drawer.
The Granite Creek Big Macher outlet died about two years ago. Its doors are chained and along its windowless flank where Yiddish and Roman characters once spelled out the name of the store, there is only a cryptic series of holes, domino pips, a braille of failure.
Landsman leaves his car at the median and hikes across the giant frozen blank of the parking lot toward the front door. The snow is not as deep here as in the streets of the central city. The sky is high and pale gray, with darker gray tiger stripes. Landsman huffs through his nostrils as he marches toward the glass doors, their handles pinioned like arms with a dangling length of blue rubberized chain. Landsman has this idea that he’s goin to knock on those doors with his shield held high and his attitude vibrating like a force field, and that slinking whippet of a man, Rafi Zilberblat, is going to step sheepish and blinking into the snow-dazzling day.
The first bullet blackens the air alongside Landsman’s right ear like a fat humming fly. He doesn’t even know it’s a bullet until he hears, or remembers hearing, a muffled burst and then a clamor of the glass. By then he’s falling on his belly in the snow, flattening himself on the ground, where the next bullet finds the back of his head and burns it like a trail of gasoline touched by a match. Landsman drags out his sholem, but there is a cobweb in his head or over his face, and a paralysis of regret affects him. His plan was no plan at all, and now it has gone bad. He has no backup. Nobody knows where he is but Benito Taganes, with his molasses gaze and his all but universal silence. Landsman is going to die in a desolate parking lot at the margin of the world. He closes his eyes. He opens them, and the cobweb is denser and sparkling with some kind of dew. Footsteps in the snow, more than one person. Landsman raises his gun and takes aim through the sparkling strands of whatever is going wrong in his brain. He fires.
There is a cry of pain, feminine, a whuff of breath, and then the lady wishes a cancer upon Landsman’s testicles. Snow packs Landsman’s ears and melts into the collar of his coat and down his neck. Somebody snatches at Landsman’s gun and tries to drag him to his feet. Popcorn on the breath. The bandage over Landsman’s eyes stretches thin as he lurches upright. He can see the mustachioed snout of Rafi Zilberblat, and by the doors of the Big Macher, a plump bottle blonde lying on her back, her life pumping from her belly into the steaming red snow. And a couple of guns, one of them in Zilberblat’s hand, pointed at Landsman’s head. At the glint of the automatic, the cobweb of Landsman’s regrets and self-recriminations goes away. The smell of popcorn, coming from inside the abandoned store, alters his perception of the smell of blood and brings out the sweetness of it. Landsman ducks and lets go of his Smith Wesson.
Zilberblat was yanking so hard on the gun that when Landsman unclenches, the other man goes tumbling backward into the snow. Landsman scrambles on top of Zilberblat. He’s just acting now, without a thought in his head. He yanks his sholem loose and turns it around, and the world pulls the trigger on all its guns. Zilberblat grows a horn of blood from the crown of his head. The cobwebs are now in Landsman’s ears. He can hear only the breath at the back of his throat and his own blood pulsing.
For an instant a strange peace opens like an umbrella inside Landsman as he straddles the man he just killed, knees burning in the snow. He retains the presence of mind to recognize that this tranquillity is not necessarily a good sign. Then the doubts begin to crowd in around the knowledge of the mess he has made, bystanders gathering around a suicide leaper. Landsman staggers to his feet. He sees the gore on his coat, the tatters of brain, a tooth.
Two dead humans in the snow. The smell of pop corn, a buttery stink of feet, overwhelms him.
While he is busy heaving up his guts into the snow, another man wanders out of the Big Macher store. A young man with a rat snout and a loping gait. Landsman retains the wit to mark him as a Zilberblat. This Zilberblat has his arms raised and a wild look on his face. His hands are empty. But when he sees Landsman bleeding and sick on all fours, he abandons his project of surrender. He picks up the automatic lying on the ground by the ruin of his brother. Landsman careens to his feet, and the trail of fire at the back of his head flares up. He feels the ground give way, and then there is a roaring blackness.