The Yiddish Policemen's Union

by Michael Chabon

  “Holy Jesus,” Kitka says. “Look out.”

  But Landsman gets only a desk sergeant.

  “The inspector ain’t here,” the sergeant says. “What’s this about?”

  “Maybe you heard something, I don’t know, about some honor ranch out at Peril Strait?” Landsman says. “Doctors with beards?”

  “Beth Tikkun?” says the sergeant, as if it’s an American girl whose last name rhymes with “chicken”. “I know it.”

  This knowledge, his tone implies, has not brought him happiness and is not likely to do so anytime soon.

  “I might want to pay a little visit there,” Landsman says. “Say tomorrow. Think that would be okay?”

  The sergeant cannot seem to find an adequate reply to this apparently simple question. “Tomorrow,” he says at last.

  “Yes, I thought I would fly out there. Have a look around the grounds.”

  “Huh.”

  “What’s the matter, Sergeant? This Beth Tikkun place, is it on the up-and-up?”

  “That calls for an opinion,” the sergeant says. “Inspector Dick don’t let us have those. I’ll be sure to tell him you called.”

  “You have an airplane, Rocky?” Landsman says, killing the call with his middle finger.

  “I lost it,” Kitka says. “In a poker game. That’s how come I’m working for a Jew owner.”

  “No offense.”

  “That’s right,” Kitka says. “No offense.”

  “So, let’s say I wanted to pay a visit to this temple of healing out there at Peril Strait.”

  “I got a pickup tomorrow, actually,” Kitka says. “Over to Freshwater Bay. I might be able to bend a little to the right on the way over there. But I’m not going to hang around with the meter running.” He grins a beaver-tooth grin. “And it’s going to cost you a hell of a lot more than a steak dinner.”

  29

  A badge of grass, a green brooch pinned at the collarbone of a mountain to a vast black cloak of fir trees. At the center of the clearing, a handful of buildings clad in brown shakes radiate from a circular fountain, linked by paths and separated by quilted patches of lawn and gravel. A pitch at the far end, chalked for soccer, ringed by an oval track. The place has the feel of a boarding school, a backwoods academy for wayward young wealth. Half a dozen men circle the track in shorts and hooded sweatshirts. Others sit or lie prone in the center of the field, stretching before exercise, legs and arms, angles on the ground. An alphabet of men scattered on a green page. When the plane dips a wing over the playing field, the hoods of the sweatshirts train on its fuselage like the muzzles of antiaircraft cannon. From the sky it is hard to be sure, but in Landsman’s judgment, the men move and stand and stretch their pale long legs like youthful types in excellent health. Another fellow comes out of the folds of the forest in a dark coverall. He follows the arc of the Cessna, right arm crooked at the elbow and pressed against his face, making the call: We have company. Beyond the woods, Landsman catches a flicker of distant green, a roof, a scattering of white clumps that might be piles of snow.

  Kitka muscles the plane around with a shuddering and a rattling and a groan, and then they fall out of the sky all at once, then a little at a time, and hit the water with a final smack. Maybe it was Landsman doing the groaning.

  “I never thought I’d say this,” Kitka says as the Lycoming engine drops into idle and they can hear themselves think. “But six hundred dollars don’t seem like quite enough.”

  Half an hour out of Yakovy, Landsman decided to spice up their journey with a judicious application of vomit. The plane was harrowed by the smell of twenty years of rotting moose flesh, and Landsman by remorse at having broken his vow, taken after Naomi’s death, to repudiate travel by very small airplane. Still, the display of airsickness remains an achievement, given how little Landsman has eaten in the past several days.

  “I am sorry, Rocky,” Landsman says, trying to lift his voice up out of his socks. “I guess I wasn’t ready to fly again yet.”

  Landsman’s last trip by air was undertaken with his sister in her Super Cub, to no ill effect. But that was a good airplane, and Naomi was a skilled pilot, and the weather was fine, and Landsman was drunk. This time he risked the skies in a bitter condition of sobriety. Three pots of bad motel coffee forked his nervous system. He flew at the joint mercy of a stiff chop blowing in from the Yukon and a bad pilot, one whose caution made him reckless and whose self-doubt made him bold. Landsman swayed in the canvas webbing of the weary old 206 that the management of Turkel Regional Airways has seen fit to entrust to Rocky Kitka. The plane rumbled and juddered and shook. All the pins and bolts came loose from Landsman’s skeleton, and his head got turned around backward, and his arms fell off, and his eyeball rolled under the cabin heater. Somewhere over the Moore Mountains, Landsman’s vow backed up on him.

  Kitka throws open the door and leaps with the mooring line onto the floatplane dock. Landsman staggers out of the cabin onto the graying cedar planks. He stands blinking, reeling, breathing deep lungfuls of the local air with its scouring smell of pine needle and sea wrack. He straightens his tie and settles his hat on his head.

  Peril Strait is a jumble of boats, a fuel pump, a row of weathered houses in the colors of a rusted-out engine. The houses huddle on their pilings like skinny-legged ladies. A mangy stretch of boardwalk noses among the houses before wandering over to the boat slips to lie down. It all seems to be held together by a craze of hawser, tangles of fishing line, scraps of purse seine strung with crusted floats. The whole village might be nothing but driftwood and wire, flotsam from the drowning of a far-off town.

  The floatplane dock appears to have no physical connection to the boardwalk or the village of Peril Strait. It is solid, well built, new-looking, white concrete and gray-painted beams. It boasts of engineering and the logistical needs of men with money. At the shore end, it terminates in a steel gate. Beyond the gate, a winding metal stair has been whipstitched up the hillside to a clearing at the top. Alongside the stairs, a perpendicular railway cuts straight uphill, with a railed platform to elevate what cannot go by stair. A small metal sign bolted to the railing of the dock reads BETH TIKKUN RETREAT CENTER in Yiddish and American, and beneath this, in American, PRIVATE PROPERTY. Landsman fixes his gaze on the Yiddish characters. They look out of place and homely in this wild corner of Baranof Island, a gathering of lurching little Yiddish policemen in black suits and fedoras.

  Kitka fills his Stetson with water from a tap mounted against a post of the dock, and splashes down the inside of his plane, one hatful of nonpotable water after another. Landsman is mortified to have made this job necessary, but Kitka and vomit appear to be old acquaintances, and the man never quite loses his smile. With the edge of a plasticized spotter’s guide to Alaskan whales and fishes, Kitka squeegees out of the cabin door a compound of vomitus and seawater. He rinses off the spotter’s guide, gives it a shake. Then he stands in the doorway, hanging from the arch by one hand, and looks down at Landsman on the dock. The sea slaps against the pontoons of the Cessna and against the pilings. The wind blowing down from the Stikine River hums in Landsman’s ear. It stirs the brim of his hat. Over in the village, a woman’s voice rises, ragged, bawling out her child or her man. There follows the parodic barking of a dog.

  “Guess they know you’re coming,” Kitka says. “Folks up top there.” His smile turns sheepish, narrowing almost to a pout. “I guess we kind of made sure of that.”

  “I already paid somebody a surprise visit this week; it didn’t work out so good,” Landsman says. He unpockets the Beretta, pops the clip, checks the magazine. “I doubt they can really be surprised.”

  “You know who they are?” Kitka says, his eyes on the sholem.

  “No,” Landsman says. “I don’t. Do you?”

  “Seriously, bro,” Kitka says, “if I did, I would tell you. Even though you puked up my plane.”

  “Whoever they are,” Landsman says, driving home the clip, “I think they might h
ave killed my little sister.”

  Kitka mulls this statement as if searching it for weak points or loopholes. “I have to be in Freshwater by ten,” he says with a show of regret.

  “No,” Landsman says. “I understand.”

  “Otherwise, bro, I would totally back you up.”

  “Hey, come on. What are you saying? This isn’t your problem.”

  “Yeah, but I mean, Naomi. She was a fucking piece of work, though.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Actually, she never really liked me all that much.”

  “She could run hot and cold,” Landsman says, dropping the gun back into the hip pocket of his jacket. “Sometimes.”

  “All right, then,” Kitka says, kicking a splash of water out of his airplane with the toe of one Roper boot. “Hey, listen. You take care.”

  “I don’t really know how to do that,” Landsman admits.

  “You had that in common, then,” says Kitka. “You and your sister.”

  Landsman clatters down the dock and tries the knob on the steel gate just for fun. Then he tosses his satchel to the other side of the gate and clambers up and over the grille after it. As he goes over the top of the gate, his foot gets caught in the bars of the grille. His shoe falls off. He tumbles and spills down to the other side, landing with a meaty thud. He bites his tongue, and there’s a salt spurt of blood. He dusts himself off and glances back at the dock to make sure Kitka got all of that. Landsman waves to show that he’s all right. After a moment Kitka waves back. He closes the door of the plane. The engine snaps awake. The propeller vanishes into the dark sheen of its own revolution.

  Landsman starts the long climb to the top of the stairs. If anything, he’s in worse shape now than he was when he tried to conquer the stairway in the Shemetses’ apartment building on Friday morning. Last night he lay awake on the stiff gritty packet of a motel mattress. Two days ago he was shot at and beaten in the snow. He aches. He wheezes. There’s some kind of mystery pain in his rib and another in his left knee. He has to stop once, halfway up, to smoke a hortatory cigarette. He turns to watch the Cessna wobble and hum its way into the low morning clouds, abandoning Landsman to what feels, right then, like a lonely fate.

  Landsman hangs from the railing, high above the deserted beach and the village. Down below, on the crooked boardwalk, some people have emerged from their houses to watch him climb. He waves to them, and they obligingly wave back. He steps on the end of his papiros and resumes his steady upward trudge. He has the rush of the waters in the inlet for company, the distant chuckling of crows. Then these sounds fade. He hears only his breathing, the chiming of his soles against the metal treads of the stairway, the creaking strap of his satchel.

  At the top, a whitewashed flagpole flies two flags. One is the flag of the United States of America. The other is a modest white number blazoned with a pale blue Star of David. The flagpole stands in a ring of whitewashed stones encircled by a concrete apron. At the base of the flagpole, a small metal plaque reads FLAGPOLE ERECTED THROUGH THE GENEROSITY OF BARRY AND RHONDA GREENBAUM BEVERLY HILLS CALIFORNIA. A walkway leads from the circular apron to the largest of the buildings that Landsman saw from the air. The others are no more than cracker boxes clad in cedar shake, but this one makes a gesture in the direction of style. Its roof is pitched and clad in ribbed steel, painted dark green. Its windows are fitted with transoms and mullions. A deep porch wraps the building on three sides, its pillars the trunks of fir trees, still wearing their bark. At the center of the porch, a wide set of steps leads up from the concrete walk.

  Two men stand on the uppermost porch step, watching Landsman come toward them. Both have heavy beards but no sidelocks. No hose, no black hats. The one to the left is young, thirty at the outside. He’s tall, even looming, with a forehead like a concrete bunker and an underslung jaw. His beard is unruly, prone to black ringlets, with a whorl of bare skin on each cheek. His big hands dangle at his sides, pulsing like a couple of cephalopods. He wears a black suit with a generous drape and a dark rep tie. Landsman reads the twitch of longing in the big man’s fingers and tries to mark the vest for the presence of a gun. As Landsman gets closer, the big man’s eyes cool to a lightless black.

  The other man is about Landsman’s age, height, and build. He’s gone softer around the middle than Landsman, and he leans on a cane formed with a curve from some dark, glossy wood. His beard is charcoal streaked with ash, trimmed, almost debonair. He wears a tweed suit complete with vest, and he puffs a thoughtful pipe. He seems content if not delighted to see Landsman coming his way, curious, a doctor anticipating mild anomaly or a wrinkle in the usual presentation. His shoes are moccasin loafers, laced with leather thong.

  Landsman stops at the bottom step of the porch and hitches up his satchel. A woodpecker rattles its cup of dice. For a moment that and the hisses of pine needles are the only sounds. They might be the only three men in all of southeastern Alaska. But Landsman can feel other eyes watching him through the partings of window curtains, through gun sights, periscopes, and peepholes. He can feel the interrupted life of the place, morning exercise, the rinsing of coffee cups. He can smell eggs scorched in butter, toasted bread.

  “I don’t know how to tell you this,” says the tall man with the patchy beard. His voice seems to spend too long bouncing around in his chest before it emerges. The words come out thick, poured with a slow ladle. “But your ride just left without you.”

  “Am I going somewhere?” Landsman says.

  “You aren’t staying here, my friend,” says the man in the tweed suit. As soon as he says the word “friend” all friendliness seems to drain from his manner.

  “But I have a reservation,” Landsman says, watching the big man’s restless hands. “I’m younger than I look.”

  The sound like the bones in their bucket, somewhere in the woods.

  “Okay, I’m no kid, and I don’t have a reservation, but I do have a substance abuse problem,” Landsman says. “Surely that counts for something.”

  “Mister—” says the man in the tweed suit, coming down one step. Landsman can smell the bitter shag he smokes.

  “Listen,” Landsman says, “I heard about the good work you people are doing here, all right? I’ve tried everything. I know it’s crazy, but I’m at the end of my rope, and I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

  The man in the tweed suit looks back at the tall man at the top of the steps. They don’t seem to have any idea who Landsman is or what to make of him. All the fun of the past several days, in particular the torturous hop from Yakovy, seems to have rubbed off some of the noz from Landsman’s aura. He hopes and fears that he looks only like a loser, dragging his bad luck in a satchel over one arm.

  “I need help,” he says, and to his surprise, his eyes get hot with tears. “I’m in a bad way.” His voice breaks. “I’m prepared to admit that.”

  “What’s your name?” says the tall man slowly. His eyes are warm without amity. They pity Landsman without taking much of an interest in him.

  “Felnboyger,” Landsman tries, dragging out the name from some ancient arrest report. “Lev Felnboyger.”

  “Does anyone know you’re here, Mr. Felnboyger?”

  “Only my wife. And the pilot, of course.”

  Landsman sees that the two men know each other well enough to engage in a furious argument without speaking or moving anything but their eyes.

  “I’m Dr. Roboy,” says the tall man at last. He swings one of his hands toward Landsman, like the payload of a crane at the end of its cable. Landsman wants to get out of its way, but he takes hold of its cool dry bulk. “Please, Mr. Felnboyger, come inside.”

  He follows them across the sanded fir planks of the porch. High in the rafters of the porch, he spots a wasp’s nest, and he watches it for a sign of life, but it seems as deserted as every other structure on this hilltop.

  They come into an empty lobby furnished, with a podiatrist’s flair, in soft beige oblongs of foam. Drab low-
pile carpet, egg-carton gray. On the walls hang trademark-trite scenes of Sitka life, salmon boats and Yeshiva bachelors, café society on Monastir Street, a swinging klezmer that might be a stylized Nathan Kalushiner. Again Landsman has the uneasy sensation that it has all been installed and hung that morning. There is no flake of ash in the ashtrays. The rack of informational brochures is well stocked with copies of “Drug Dependency: Who Needs It!” and “Life: To Rent or to Own?” On the wall, a thermostat sighs as if suffering from the tedium. The room smells of fresh carpet and extinguished pipe. Over the door to a carpeted hallway, an adhesive plaque reads LOBBY FURNISHINGS COURTESY OF BONNIE AND RONALD LEDERER BOCA RATON FLORIDA.

  “Have a seat, please,” Dr. Roboy says in his thick black syrup of a voice. “Fligler?”

  The man in the tweed suit goes back to the French doors, opens the left panel, and checks the throw bolts at the top and bottom. Then he closes the panel, locks it, and pockets the key. He walks back past Landsman, brushing against him with a padded tweed shoulder.

  “Fligler,” Landsman says, taking hold of the smaller man’s arm gently. “You a doctor, too?”

  Fligler shakes off Landsman’s hand. He produces a book of matches from his pocket. “You bet,” he says without sincerity or conviction. With the fingers of his right hand, he peels back a match from the matchbook, scrapes it into flame, and touches it to the bowl of his pipe, all in a single continuous motion. While his right hand is busy entertaining Landsman with this minor feat, his left hand plunges into the pocket of Landsman’s jacket and comes away with the .22.

  “There’s your problem right there,” he says, holding the gun up where everyone can see it. “Watch the doctor, now.”

  Landsman watches dutifully as Fligler raises the gun, considering it with a keen medical eye. But then the next minute a door slams somewhere inside Landsman’s head, and after that he gets distracted—for half a second—by the drone of a thousand wasps flying in through the porch of his left ear.