The Tribe

by Bari Wood

  Levy stopped walking and sat on a boulder facing the water. “Would you marry this girl Alma?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Hawkins said.

  “You’re lonely,” Levy said, “vulnerable. You married wrong once and now should be very careful.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Tell me what she’s like.”

  Hawkins wanted to do her justice, but nothing about her seemed worth mentioning. He tried anyway. “She’s pretty. She plays pool, dances, loves sex . . . she’s . . . fun . . .” he finished lamely.

  “Ah . . . fun,” Levy said. “I, on the other hand, loved a serious woman. . . .”

  Hawkins saw Luria and Dworkin coming across the beach, holding their hats against the wind.

  “Why are they always with us?” Hawkins asked suddenly.

  “Because you’re an outsider,” Levy said, “and they don’t trust you.”

  “The shvartze, right?”

  Levy smiled. “That makes it worse,” he said gently. “But they’d be suspicious of anyone.”

  “What are they to you?”

  “Old friends,” Levy said, looking out at the Connecticut shore.

  “Just them?” Hawkins asked.

  “No. There’re more. You know them. Fineman, Walinsky . . . the old man, Feldsher.”

  They were only a few yards away and Hawkins asked, “What do they think I’ll do to you?”

  Levy leaned over and whispered to Hawkins, “Kill me and eat me. . . .”

  They laughed so hard Levy fell off the boulder, and Hawkins helped him up. They were still laughing when Luria and Dworkin got to them. Dworkin smiled to keep them company, but Luria stood like a post with his black jacket whipping in the wind. They stopped laughing, Hawkins put his jacket back on, and arm in arm, he and Levy walked back across the beach to the parking lot. Dworkin and Luria followed, and Hawkins could feel Luria watching his back. For the first time he realized that Luria hated him and wanted to get rid of him.

  In August, Luria almost succeeded. The Gallo wars were at their height, and Hawkins and Ableson had found Benny Gonnona, a small-­time bookie, kneeling on the floor of his office with his hands tied behind his back and three bullets in his head. His head caught the edge of his old rolltop desk as he fell, and the desk held him there, half upright, so he looked like he was praying with half his head gone. The super found him, and he was still sick by the time Hawkins and Ableson got there; Hawkins had seen more gruesome scenes, but there was something especially awful about the position of the corpse in that dirty little office with its phones, filthy window, bare splintered floor.

  He went back to the precinct, showered, and put on a clean shirt, but he still felt soiled by what they’d seen. He had a drink with Ableson; but he needed Levy. He left Ableson, bought a bottle of slivovitz, and took it to the shop.

  It was warm, and the street was quiet. Luria was on his stool, Levy was in the back with two young Hasidim­­­­­. Hawkins caught glimpses of them in the stacks. They wore long black coats and wide-­brimmed hats. They were pale and their side curls were damp and clung to their cheeks.

  Hawkins poured a drink for Luria, and Luria took the glass and raised it.

  “To the return of Adam,” Luria said.

  “Adam . . .” Hawkins said stupidly.

  Luria got down from the stool. His jacket was off, and Hawkins realized that Luria was almost as big as he was. He leaned on the table, massive hands flat, supporting his heavy arms. He’d taken his glasses off and his narrow gray eyes were bright.

  “Adam, you shlemiel. Jacob’s son, the light of our lives. You don’t know Jacob has a son Adam?”

  “Of course I do,” Hawkins said. His voice was tight.

  “Of course you do,” Luria mimicked. “Well, he’s coming home, Sergeant, with a doctorate from the University of Jerusalem. Next month he’ll sit where you sit, he’ll talk and laugh with his father, and I don’t think Jacob will have time for us anymore. Not with such a smart, loving, handsome son to fill his evenings. No, Sergeant, our time together is over. . . .”

  “Isaac!” Levy cried sharply from the edge of the stacks.

  Hawkins stood up and backed away from Luria. He was dazed; the beloved little shop was suddenly stifling and he went up the steps to the street to get air. Levy called his name, but he kept going. He crossed Nostrand and headed down Sterling, to the end of the street where they’d demolished Ebbets Field to put up a huge apartment complex. He went right into the construction site, which looked like it had been bombed, and he sat down in the dust at the foot of a bare girder. He wasn’t sure how long he stayed there before he heard something moving in the rubble. He thought it was a cat, or a rat, and he started to get up when Jacob Levy came out of the shadows and stood over him. From this angle, Jacob looked enormous and the reflection of the moonlight coming off the stone and concrete all around them sunk his eyes into holes and threw the lines and ridges of his skull into relief.

  He looked down at Hawkins sitting in the rubble and said, “I need you more than you need me. . . . You’re my hope for knowing and understanding what is now, whether I like it or not, my world. And I do like it. It’s a better world. I wouldn’t go back if I could, not in miles or time. You . . . you keep me here, in my mind as well as the ground I stand on. You with your brightness, your life . . . your newness. The others aren’t here, but they aren’t there either, poor souls. But with your help my son and I will find a home here. Besides,” he said shyly, “I . . . care for you.”

  Then he sat down in the stone dust next to Hawkins and opened the bottle of slivovitz he had brought from the shop. He took a deep swallow, and gave the bottle to Hawkins.

  “You think you’re jealous of Adam,” Levy said, “but you won’t be. He’s part of me, so you’ll love him. You can be his father, too, and his brother.”

  Levy took the bottle back and looked around the site. “Looks like there’s been a war here,” he’d said.

  Chapter 2

  They raised the cover and Levy looked at Adam’s face. The gashes on the side of it were wide and rubbery, slightly green, and Levy gagged, turned away, and almost fell, but Hawkins caught him and held him up.

  “It’s my son,” Levy croaked. “It’s my Adam.” He held on to Hawkins with one hand, and grabbed the collar of his shirt with the other. “I need a knife.”

  “No, Jake . . .”

  “I need a knife.”

  Pescado came over to them. “It’s for keriah,” he told Hawkins. “It’s a ritual.”

  “So get him a knife,” Hawkins snapped.

  All they had was a scalpel.

  “Take it,” Levy said. Hawkins did. “Now cut my shirt, here.”

  Hawkins put one arm firmly around Levy, and with the scalpel in his free hand, he caught the point on the fabric of Levy’s shirt and pulled. It ripped and Levy moaned.

  “Take me home, Roger. Please take me home.”

  Pescado said softly, “You have to sign, Rabbi.”

  Levy signed the forms and dropped the pen.

  “Now, please,” he told Hawkins.

  They were almost at the door when a man in a white uniform stopped them. He was holding a needle, tip up, catching the light.

  “What’s that shit,” Hawkins snarled.

  “Librium,” Pescado said from across the bare room. “I’ll put him to sleep.”

  They rolled up Levy’s sleeve, the needle point glittered, and Hawkins looked away. He smelled alcohol and something like old ice, and Levy leaned against him. Then they left them alone, and Levy and Hawkins went slowly and carefully out of the morgue. Like two old drunks, Hawkins thought, just trying to get home.

  The elevator was still out, and Hawkins carried Levy up the six flights. He cradled him against his chest, holding his head so his hat wouldn’t fall off. Rachel was waiting on
the landing, and she held the door open for him while he carried Levy in and down the narrow hall to Adam’s old room. Adam had loved horses, and the walls were covered with pictures of ponies photographed against rocks, of Arabians running and big, solid Percherons standing still. The only other picture in the room was a faded black and white of Levy as a young man. In it Levy was wearing a fur-­brimmed hat and smiling at a girl who was just as young and almost as beautiful as he was. Hawkins had never seen the picture before, but he knew that this was Leah, Adam’s mother, Rachel’s mother-in-­law. . . .

  Rachel was crying silently, but she helped him anyway, and they got Levy onto the bed, got his hat out from under his head and, working together, they rolled him back and forth between them and got his jacket off. Then she undid his belt and took off his shoes, while Hawkins unbuttoned his collar and cuffs. He watched her hands as they moved precisely, gracefully, long fingers at the belt buckle, then shoelaces. He kept looking up at her face and realized that even though she was pale, and her eyes were swollen and red, she looked lovely to him. He didn’t know if that was because she was really so beautiful or if there was just something about her face that fascinated him. He’d only seen her a few times before tonight. The first time was the day Adam married her four years ago, just before they left for Minnesota. He remembered thinking that Adam’s wife would probably look like Rose Pinchik, who was pleasant-­plain with short legs; but when she raised her short veil to kiss Adam, he’d been shocked at how pretty she was, so pretty he couldn’t talk to her except to say how happy he was for them. After that he’d jockeyed around people who got in his line of sight so he could watch her.

  “Let’s get his shirt off,” she said, “it’s hot in here.”

  He lifted Levy and she got his arms out of the sleeves.

  They settled him back and for the first time Hawkins saw the blue numbers tattooed on Levy’s arm.

  He touched them with his fingertips.

  Rachel watched him. “Didn’t he tell you?” she asked.

  “No. Adam did once. A long time ago.” One night at Vinnie’s bar. Hawkins was drunk at the time and all at once he was angry. Not at the Nazis, but at Adam for telling him about something so terrible, so alien. Every Jew in Brooklyn had a hard-­luck story, he thought . . . the camps, the pogroms, the college quotas. The Irish, too, like Mike Carr and Maguire, always sitting with their backs to a wall, as if someone was going to shoot them from the door, and moaning about their troubles. The blacks were no better. Marsh Robinson got drunk there every Wednesday night, picked fights with whites, and carried on about slavery as if he’d just been impressed from Africa instead of being born and raised in Cleveland.

  But tonight, as he looked at Levy’s thin white arm with its line of blue numbers, he remembered that little girls in Belfast made a game of setting fire to their dollies; that when his father was young in North Carolina, he’d ridden the back of the bus, drunk from a special fountain, pissed in a special toilet, and bowed his head in helpless rage and inexplicable guilt when white men called him nigger. And only forty years ago some German with lightning on his collar pulled Jacob Levy off a cattle-­car transport from Poland and tattooed these numbers on his arm . . .

  Rachel was watching him. “Do you want a drink?” she asked. He nodded. They put a light blanket over Levy and left him alone with the light on. Hawkins followed her to the dining room. She said, “We’ve got brandy.” She tried to sound normal, but she was getting white. She couldn’t bend over to open the cabinet, so he did it for her; he looked up and saw her swallow hard and put her hand to her mouth. She swayed and he jumped up and grabbed her arms.

  “I’m going to be sick.” Then she said, “No, maybe I’ll just faint . . .” Then she started sobbing, with her hands flat on her belly, looking straight at him, her face twisted so it should have been ugly but wasn’t. He led her into the living room, which was dark, and hot, and he opened the windows. The phone rang and he answered it. It was Rose Pinchik calling to find out if it was true. Yes, he said, it was true, and she should get here because Jacob was drugged and Rachel . . . then he heard Rachel dry-­gasping in the living room, and he hung up. But she was still just sobbing, trying now to catch her breath. The sobs turned to hiccups, and he left the lights out and rubbed her back, between the shoulder blades, firmly, steadily, in rhythm, until the little spasms stopped. The phone rang again. This time it was Golda Cohen asking if it was true. He said it was, then he got the bottle of brandy out of the cabinet and two glasses and went back to the living room. She was sitting now, still crying. He poured the brandy and was going to hand it to her, or feed it to her if she couldn’t take it, when the doorbell rang.

  Hawkins pushed the downstairs buzzer, and when he opened the door Luria and Dworkin were coming down the hall. Little Dworkin was still out of breath from climbing the stairs. “Is it true?” Dworkin gasped. “Yes,” Hawkins said. In the background they heard Rachel crying. Luria raised his hand silently and he grabbed the collar of his shirt and tore it. The ripping sound filled the hall and Dworkin wailed and Hawkins heard doors open downstairs. Then Dworkin tore his shirt, which was almost funny—two old men standing there with old-­fashioned ribbed undershirts showing through torn shirts. Then Dworkin wailed something that sounded like “Aunt Sophie . . . Auuuuuunnnttt Soooophieee.” It was a shocking sound and, without warning, Luria slapped Dworkin’s face. Luria swung again and Hawkins grabbed Luria’s torn collar and shoved him hard against the wall; he lifted his fist high over their heads, but Luria didn’t flinch. Dworkin pulled at Hawkins’s arm, mumbling, “Please, please, Roger. He did right. I shouldn’t talk like that. Please.” Luria waited; Dworkin kept mumbling, and the phone rang in the apartment.

  Hawkins lowered his fist and let Luria go. “Answer the phone,” Luria said softly. Hawkins backed away, watching Luria. “The phone,” Luria said again.

  It was Ableson this time, calling to tell Hawkins that they’d gotten a tip and picked up five kids for killing Adam.

  The kids were members of a gang called the Eagles. They met in the basement of the Lensky house on President Street. Hawkins made Baer stop in front of the clubhouse. The bank of ivy that was once Mrs. Lensky’s pride was dying. The glass in the front door was dirty, there was litter in the basement entryway, and he knew the Lenskys were dead or moved away. Some time ago, too, from the extent of the neglect. The stairs down to the basement were cracked and someone had spray-­painted “Fuck you” on the stone wall.

  “Fuck you, too,” Hawkins whispered.

  The clubhouse had one window in front; on it gold decal letters spelled out “Eagles.” Under that someone had painted a child’s-­nightmare eagle with huge claws and a tearing beak. At first the eagle looked ugly and cruel; it fed Hawkins’s rage. Then he saw that the artist had painted each feather with ribs and outlined the talons on the claws. The painting was painstaking, almost loving, and against his will he felt something like pity for the artist. He couldn’t help asking himself why they’d done it. Why five kids who met here to get away from packed apartments, family fights, squalling babies, and the constant pressure of being poor, came out of this little haven and stabbed Adam to death for thirty dollars.

  It was crazy, like his friend Pinchik said everything was. “People’re hot to kill,” Pinchik once told him. “Don’t believe me, Roger, go see Psycho; watch the audience watching that scene in the shower where he stabs her in the tits, the belly, the juice, and there’s blood everywhere, and that knife’s going into her with a crunch.

  “The people don’t look away. They watch with their mouths open, like they were watching a good fuck. . . . People’re hot to kill,” he’d concluded.

  Was that it? Hawkins wondered miserably. Were they hot to do it?

  “Maybe he didn’t have enough on him,” Ableson said. “Maybe they hated philosophy teachers. Why. Did you ever hear a reason that made sense?”

  It was only midn
ight; the air conditioning was off for the night and the men sweated. Most of the windows had been sealed shut and last week Max Aronson had thrown his chair at one of them but succeeded only in cracking it. The cracked window made the room look raffish.

  Hawkins took off his tie and jacket.

  “Can I see them?”

  “You better do it tonight. They’ll be out by tomorrow night because no one saw nothin’, no one heard nothin’, no one says nothin’. I had half the street in here. It looked like the Puerto Rican Day picnic in here.” Ableson twisted paper clips. “I ‘interviewed’ thirty-­five of them. They were home when it happened. They live on the ground floor. It’s hot, so they had their windows open—”

  Hawkins cut in, “Let me see the kids.”

  “Okay. See ’em. Try and kill a couple while you’re down there.”

  They were in the holding room on the third floor. Ableson called it the pen. They were sitting at tables, or on the molded plastic benches against the wall. They were active . . . smoking, eating candy, twisting the handles on the vending machines.

  Hawkins stopped in the doorway, confused because he couldn’t remember what he’d expected to see when he opened the door. They were just a bunch of kids, sixteen, seventeen, and too lively to sit still. Hawkins crossed the room and pulled one of the kids’ hands away from the knobs of a vending machine and smashed his back against the machine. The change inside jingled.

  “No candy,” Hawkins said.

  The boy backed away from him to the others. They looked at each other, then at Hawkins, who was still in his tux with the strings of his tie hanging loose around his neck. He looked exhausted, his skin had a gray cast, and his eyes were bloodshot. He outweighed the biggest of them by fifty pounds and they looked scared.

  “Adam Levy was my friend,” he said.

  “Who?” asked one. He was very thin and he had black-lashed blue eyes.