by Bari Wood
She nodded, still smiling at him. He sensed that she wanted to look down at his body. “It’s hard to imagine a Brooklyn Yiddish bookstore way out on the Island,” he said. They were whispering to each other.
“We’ll carry stationery, too, and some paperbacks. We’ll do all right. Jacob’ll give you the address . . . you’ll come to see us, won’t you? There’s a garden, and we’ll be near the Sound. . . .”
A tear ran down her cheek. He reached up to wipe it away, but before he could touch her the door opened, light from the hall came into the dim hot room, and Golda Cohen marched in. She stared at Hawkins and he knew how bad it looked: he was alone in a dark room with Rachel, reaching for her; he was big and black, she was frail and white, and he still had the hard on, which felt solid and frighteningly free; it would sway if he moved.
“I thought you’d gotten lost,” Golda said. He didn’t answer. She tried to look stern. “There’s fifty pounds of pickled fish waiting for you and my ass is melted.” She turned to Rachel. “You look like shit.”
He looked at that face; did she? he wondered. And how did she usually look? He remembered her as Adam’s bride, lifting her veil to kiss her new husband who was blushing and had shining eyes.
“It’s a hell in this place,” Golda said.
Rachel was looking at Hawkins over Golda’s shoulder.
“Come home with me,” Golda said. “It’s air-conditioned, you can sit by the pool tomorrow. . . .”
“I can’t leave Jacob,” Rachel said.
“They’ll be here for seven days. He won’t even know you’re gone,” Golda said.
Hawkins backed to the door.
“He needs me, Golda.”
Golda shrugged. She had light red dyed hair, a big pleasant face, and eyes as warm as her father’s.
“The invitation stands. Tonight, tomorrow night. Any night you say.” Her voice was gruff but full of kindness. Then she turned to Hawkins. “You’ll be glad to hear I threw all that crap out. There was enough salt in that fish to pickle your balls.”
He got the door open.
“They put out a coffee urn, and some Danish,” she was saying to Rachel, “and they spilled coffee on your bubbe’s§ lace cloth. I put seltzer on it, but you can see the stain. We’ll try vinegar.”
Hawkins went out into the hall and closed the door.
Hawkins ordered coffee in a cup, not in the glass they usually served at the Union Dairy. Pinchik did, too, then took out the bottle and in plain sight of everyone poured vodka in the coffee. The cream curdled instantly.
Pinchik tried it. “Awful,” he said.
“Awful,” Hawkins agreed.
“Roger, we’re moving.”
Pinchik and Levy were moving; Adam was dead. Hawkins looked out of the window at the street. It was almost ten, but it was warm and clear, and the street was crowded with people. Fat Spanish women in flowered cotton dresses and men in shirt-sleeves passed the window. Some kids had opened a hydrant, and the water ran slowly in the gutter carrying leaves and litter with it. Jewish men in wide-brimmed black hats and long coats stepped carefully across the river the hydrant water made, then walked on, arm in arm. Pinchik followed Hawkins’s eyes, and he looked through the window, too, as he talked.
“I don’t want to go,” Pinchik said softly. “I was born two blocks from here; I was bar mitzvahed at Shaare Tikvah, and married at the Candlelight; I was gonna die here.” He smiled wanly. “. . . to die in Brooklyn, in Beth Israel a few miles from here. In a semiprivate room with a view of the bay. A good room to die in . . . color TV, phone. In the morning I watch the tankers come in, in the afternoon I watch As the World Turns, at night, the stars, the ceiling, The Rockford Files . . . then die.”
He turned his head away. “This was my hometown, Roger, as surely as if I’d come from Cairo, Illinois, or Ames, Iowa. People forget that when you say you’re from Brooklyn. But it’s true. My hometown. Now I gotta go.”
“Just because of Adam . . .”
“Just because of Adam? Are you crazy?”
“No. Adam could have been murdered in Cairo, Illinois, or Ames, Iowa.”
“But he wasn’t. Christ, look out there, Roger. The streets are filthy and the nice old houses . . . Lensky’s, Shirmer’s, the del Pinos’ . . . they’re rooming houses with little hot plates in the bedrooms and one toilet for every floor. And the people are different. Oh, I know, we’re supposed to love each other anyway. But they’re different in ways that task me. I hate them, they hate me. My son is eight, and full of life, but he won’t go out to play. He’s scared, Roger. It’s still light at seven, but he sits in the kitchen like an old man and stares out of the window. Five times this year they stole his lunch money. Five times! The last time, one of the little bastards kicked him in the balls. An eight-year-old kid. What should I do? Nu, tell me. I could teach him to fight like them, I suppose. But is the rest of the world like Flatbush and Bed-Stuy? Is it? Do I want an eight-year-old kid around who kicks other kids in the balls, or pounds them in the face or stabs them? Do I?”
Hawkins couldn’t answer.
“No, Roger. I’m gonna figure that my son can get by without learning to kill. I’m gonna figure that there is civilization out there. And that’s where I’m going.”
“Where is it,” Hawkins asked at last, “this civilization?”
“Riverdale,” Pinchik answered. They laughed so hard that old Yoshe, the waiter, told them to shut up because they were disturbing the other customers.
He took Pinchik’s new address and phone number and they promised each other they’d get together at least once a month.
Chaim Garfield had read about the murder of the rabbi’s son. He tried not to think about it, especially now on Rosh Hashanah, but the details kept coming back to him. Stabbed twenty times, the paper had said. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, looked up through the branches of a tree, and prayed that Reb Levy had not had to see his son’s body. Other people on the street looked curiously at him, and he walked on up Route 9A to 236th Street, then across to the river. It was late, the services were over at most shuls by now, and the people were home for dinner. Dinner was waiting for him, too. There would be chicken basted with honey and orange juice, tsimmes made with honey and apples, and honey cake. Everything sweet in hopes the new year would be the same. He walked with his head up like he always did, not looking where he was going, and he tripped on the uneven sidewalk and had to grab a tree trunk to keep from falling. He shook his head at himself and went on. He left shops, houses, buildings behind and reached the riverbank in front of a huge gray stone apartment building. There must be a hundred miles of hallways in the place, he thought; more. He didn’t like this backdrop for the ritual he had to perform, but there were probably other people at the prettier river accesses and he wanted to be alone.
He wasn’t usually a loner; he liked being with people. He’d been trained for the rabbinate by the rabbi of Vorka, and when they sent him to Theresienstadt, the “model” camp, the older men kept up the teaching. He wasn’t sure anymore if there was a God, or how he felt about him if there was, but he’d stayed a rabbi when he got to America, first in Washington Heights, then in Riverdale. First because he liked people; he wasn’t sure why else—inertia maybe. He wanted to be alone for this ritual because the others believed in it, or looked like they did, and he didn’t. He was going to do it anyway. Again, he wasn’t sure why. Maybe because he always had.
He half slid down the short bank and stood on a narrow stone shelf above the river. It was clear, the rain had stopped, there was no fog and he could see the lights on the Jersey shore and on the bridge. He stood at the edge of the shelf so the river was only a few feet below him, and he bowed his head. He didn’t pray. He looked into the water instead and thought that sturgeon were living there again, and shad, then he turned out the pockets of his jacket and trousers, symboli
cally brushing sins out of his clothes into the water. He brushed lint out of them, and crumbs of tobacco; they made a small scum on the river, which was gone in an instant. He unrolled his cuffs and brushed them into the water, too, then took off his jacket and flapped it over the river. Then, still holding his jacket over the fast current, he said in Hebrew, “Cast all our sins into the depths of the sea; and may You cast all the sins of Your people . . . the house of Israel . . . into a place where they will not be remembered, or visited, or ever again come to mind.”
Later that night, after his daughters had gone back home to Scarsdale and Hartsdale with their husbands and children and his wife had made her last phone call and gone to sleep, he went into the clean kitchen that still smelled of honey, and, with just the moonlight to show him where things were, he prepared a box of food—a jar of honey, a wrapped piece of honey cake, chicken, and a plastic container of tsimmes—to take to Ossining tomorrow, to his brother Meyer who was serving a life sentence for murder.
† Bastards.
‡ Bargain.
§ Grandmother’s.
Chapter 4
They found knives in the lake in the park, but they were clean and could have come from anywhere. They searched the boys’ houses while their mothers trailed them from room to room followed by a procession of children, and found nothing. They searched the clubhouse and found some grass, dirty pictures, comic books, beer, and a guitar with a broken string. Hawkins looked out of the basement window at the blank wall in front of it, and plucked the dead-sounding strings. It was the last day of formal mourning and after the search he went to Levy’s.
The apartment was quiet except for Oshevsky at the door, and the circle of men. But the circle was smaller, and Hawkins realized that Luria and Fineman were missing. Walinsky said he didn’t know where they were, and Dworkin was asleep in his chair with his hands folded in front of him.
Levy looked and sounded vague, except about moving. He had their new address and phone number written down for Hawkins and he watched while Hawkins put it in his wallet; then he went back to staring at the far wall over the heads of the other men.
Hawkins left the living room and went looking for Rachel. She wasn’t in the kitchen. The bedroom door was closed and he knocked on it, then opened it with his heart pounding, but it was empty. He went back down the hall to Adam’s room. The pictures were off the walls, the books were packed, and the aquarium was gone. There was nothing left but the bed, surrounded by packing boxes. He shut the door quickly and stood in front of it for a moment, then he went back through the apartment. When he got to the little entry hall, he turned around for one last look. Jacob was still staring at the wall. He was pale, his eyes were half-closed. He looked like he was in a trance, but Hawkins saw him blink. The other men’s heads were bowed, and the scene was oddly silent and motionless. It bothered him for some reason. He went out the front door and, without thinking, he let it slam, but he knew none of them would even look up to see who’d left.
He wrote Levy’s new address in his book when he got to the office. He tried to work, but he kept thinking of the men in the circle. They’d looked like they were waiting for someone, except Levy, who’d looked like he was having a vision.
Hawkins went through the papers on his desk; the commissioner wanted an income/education breakdown on the new black rookies. He was supposed to write a speech for a PBA meeting, on anything he wanted, and he tried to work on it, but couldn’t. He looked out of his window at people in the little park next to the buildings. He made up lives for them. The man with the striped red and black umbrella was a customers’ man with three children. The harried look and conservative three-piece suit told him that much. But the umbrella was gaudy, and didn’t fit. So maybe the man was a fag . . . a closet job. A squall came up, rain crashed down, and the people ran for cover; the drops hit hard, mud splattered the sidewalk and peoples’ legs, and Hawkins thought of Adam in his fresh grave, the rain smashing against the dirt that covered him. He’d go to the grave today and leave a pebble as a token of his visit the way Adam had done when they’d gone to old Feldsher’s grave. He would pray for his friend, even though he hadn’t prayed since he was a kid and didn’t remember any prayers. He’d ask Ableson to go with him, to help him.
He tried to call Ableson, but he was out. He tried again at four and at five, but Lerner hadn’t heard from him and he sounded worried.
He tried again to work, but he couldn’t forget that it was after five and Mo still hadn’t called in. It wasn’t like him. Mo was a rock, the most reliable officer in that precinct—or any other, Hawkins thought. If only they were all like Mo. Then where was he? Hawkins looked at the clock. Five-fifteen. It was getting dark earlier now and they couldn’t go to the grave today. They’d go on Sunday, and maybe bring Alma and Peg. Five-twenty-five and still no Mo. Hawkins wondered if his old friend had found another woman. He wouldn’t tell Hawkins if he had, because Hawkins was Peg’s friend, too, and he’d hate knowing about it. Maybe Mo was getting it right now at the Granada Hotel across from the precinct.
At five-thirty-five Mo called on Hawkins’s private line. “Roger, help me.” He sounded sick.
“Where are you?”
“The clubhouse on President Street. Take a squad car. Use the siren.” Incredibly, Ableson sobbed. “Get here, oh God, get here. . . .”
Every window on President Street was dark. Hawkins watched Ableson climb out of his car like an old man, holding the door frame and seatback to pull himself up. Gray mud or something was smeared all over the front of Ableson’s jacket, his face was in shadow, and Hawkins had a sudden nightmare image of mud melting off his friend’s face like gray acid, taking flesh and features with it, leaving clean, white bone behind. The people would come to the windows then, but they would have smooth, hairless stocking-mask faces with gauze eyes. Ableson reached him and raised his head; he was just Ableson, but very pale.
He said, “The boys in the clubhouse are dead.”
Hawkins looked up the street. It was empty and silent; the rain fell steadily.
“All five?” Hawkins asked.
“All five,” Ableson answered. The stuff on Ableson’s clothes smelled of mold, mud, algae, and rotting vegetation, like a tidal swamp or pond bottom.
Hawkins looked into Ableson’s eyes; they were glazed and open too wide. “Mo,” he said as gently as he could, “Mo, we need help here. Call Lerner, then turn on the lights for me.”
Mo grabbed his arm, and something in Hawkins shriveled at the thought of getting that stuff on him. “Don’t go down there, Roger . . .”
“It’s okay.” He tried to sound soothing. “Just get me some light.”
“Don’t,” Ableson cried. Hawkins repeated stubbornly, “The light, Mo.” But Ableson didn’t move. Hawkins went to the squad car and turned on the top light and the side spots. He even turned on the headlights. Red and white beams speared the rain. He went to the steps and looked into the well. Gray stuff streaked the walls, steps, and stone floor. The window was smashed and only the tip of the pointed eagle’s wing was left on a long shard sticking out of the frame. The door was splintered and hung loose. The steps looked slick and Hawkins reached for the wall, touched gray slime, and snatched his hand back. He wiped it on the clean stone edge of the basement well until he’d scraped the skin. He got to floor level, left the turning light behind, and went through the wrecked door into the basement.
There was more mud here, and the smell was stronger, mixed with basement smell. He breathed through his mouth, but then he thought he could taste the smell. It was metallic and moldy and seemed to coat his tongue. He swallowed, trying not to gag, and pulled his flashlight out of his pocket. The rotating light from the car came through the window, but all it did was throw shadows, and he thought he saw a pile of pipes and conduits or broken furniture. Then his foot hit something soft, and he shone his li
ght down. His shoe rested against a denim covered leg. He moved the light up. There was nothing where the leg should have joined the torso. His gorge rose but he made himself look. Femoral blood leaked slowly through the torn flesh, marrow oozed out of smashed bone on the muddy cement floor. He retched and dropped the light. It rolled, and shadows jumped all around him; then it stopped. He saw bodies in the light, tangled together, thrown against the wall and covered with gray mud.
Hawkins stood under the shower until his fingers puckered and the hot water faltered and ran out. He tied a towel around his waist, came out into the kitchen, and shoved all his clothes, even his shoes and his good raincoat, into a big plastic trash bag and carried the bag out back with the rest of the garbage. It was warm again, people’s windows were open, and he heard talking and laughing. He went back and sat at the table his father had made, surrounded by cabinets his father put in thirty years ago.
His mother put on the TV in the den. Out on the street something fell with a crash and his head started aching. He tried to think about Levy, the circle of men, and the dead boys in the clubhouse, but the headache intruded and he gave up and just sat at the bare table, suspended, while background music to some TV show came out through the den door. The kitchen window was open, and the noise of his neighbors’ TVs and radios echoed in the courts and bounced off the walls of the houses until the whole back of the block echoed. It was a trick of sound that reminded Hawkins of the courtyard in A Tale of Two Cities where Sydney Carton waited on a Sunday afternoon for Lucie Manette. It was summer, London was quiet, and Carton could hear footsteps on the street he couldn’t see. As they got closer, they were magnified and multiplied by the courtyard walls until two people walking sounded like hundreds rushing. The echoes had foreshadowed the future.
Hawkins listened to Walter Cronkite intoning the news, a game show audience screaming, the twang of country music, men saying lines in a movie or play, and lugubrious background music, and he wondered if the babble presaged some chaos coming. He thought of the basement and the bodies thrown around like trash. He wondered which one of the dead boys was the one who’d cried, and the pain in his head got so bad he pushed the sides of his skull with his fists. The noise got louder for a second, then the wind started up, the dead air that fed the volume moved, and the din subsided.
