The Death of Israel Leventhal

by Boom Baumgartner

  Charles opened the door as if he wasn't surprised. He wasn't as pretty as he used to be. Age softened his jawline and weakened his chin. His brown hair grayed into a sandy color, and the wrinkles by his eyes ravined through his skin. George was surprised to see that even his stomach had lost its definition, replaced by a small potbelly.

  George only gave those things a cursory thought before noting that Charles did not have a gun in his hand. Once, Aodhan had told George that Charles got off on George never getting revenge. George believed it.

  "Boy George, what are you doing here?" asked Charles, eyebrows raised.

  "I heard you were in town," George said. "Wanted to be on the welcome committee."

  The corner of Charles' lip quirked up. "I don't see a fruit basket."

  "Obviously." Then George drew back his fist and aimed for the bridge of Charles' nose.

  With a muffled grunt, Charles fell back into the room. George was on him in an instant, pummeling his head, shoulders and chest as he struggled to get away.

  When George felt he had done enough, he pinned Charles to the ground. "You and me, Charles? We are going to have a little talk."

  Charles' eyes blinked open, his pupils dilated in shock. "What the fuck, George?" he croaked.

  "Don't act so surprised. We are Carthage and Rome. You knew this was going to happen."

  "What the fuck are you on about? Have you gone mad?" His voice was still gravelly. "I thought you were here to ask questions, not fucking murder me. Christ, George."

  "What did you do to Leventhal?"

  "I didn't do anything to him."

  "That's not what Jaime LaFleur says."

  "Fuck…"

  George leaned his weight harder into Charles. "You didn't think I'd find out?"

  "I didn't think you'd have the balls to come after me." Charles glared up at George, the sharp edges of his canine teeth glinting in the neon light. "I know your nightmares, Boy George, and I'm in all of them."

  "Shut up." George growled. "Why did you kill Leventhal?"

  "What do you want me to say? That I wanted to take everything from you? I thought you'd have learned your lesson about not trusting anyone in this business."

  "What do you mean?"

  "She was lying, you daft cunt. She just doesn't want me to muscle in on her territory, so she used Leventhal to get to me. Maybe I should've kept you around. You'd be one hell of a deterrent if someone tried to off me."

  This didn't make sense. George shook his head and asked, "But how did you know Leventhal was dead?"

  "I'm not telling you. I need that information to keep me alive. You kill me, I swear you could put me in a freezer and visit me every day until you reach a hundred, and I will never tell you..."

  "Oh Charles, you knew for a long time that I was going to kill you. You were dead the moment you met me. Don't act like this was never going to happen." The words from George's mouth dripped like poison.

  Charles coughed weakly, his eyes half rolled back into his head, and he struggled against George's hold. "God, I hate you."

  George considered his options. He was very partial to cutting off one of Charles' nipples, but then he realized he didn't want to deal with the mess of ditching the knife and washing his clothes.

  While he contemplated what to do next, Charles wrestled one of his arms free and knocked George on the side of the head with a heavy, hard-covered book that must have fallen from the nightstand during the struggle.

  George cursed and reflexively let go to try and defend himself. As he scrambled to get up, Charles had already run toward the door, beside which was a gun. George had not even looked for it as he came in. He barely had time to dodge for cover as a shot rang out. Then he returned fire.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He had royally fucked this up. He had to get out of there. A squeal of tires confirmed that was exactly what Charles was doing. Fuck. He had to get out before the cops came. He rushed to his car, and sped away.

  Dido, he thought, thy name is George Rose.

  Chapter Eight

  Israel reserved his hotel room under the name Ali Imran as he considered his next plans. His eyes drooped as he went through his network of contacts, looking for the name Woodmansey.

  God, he was tired, though. Faking one's death took a lot more energy than it should have.

  Before the Amanda Long job, he had staked out a community college student, and faked IDs to plant on the body. He felt guilty about it. Usually, the people he murdered were drug dealers, terrorists, soldiers, and corporate assholes who understood the life they had chosen for themselves. This was just some kid on his way home from class whose only crime was looking a bit like Israel, though his lips were too thin and his nose far too narrow. He also had green eyes, but that didn't matter much. For this to be believable, he would have to blow the face off anyway.

  Rose, on the other hand, was a liability. If Rose knew, there was a good chance the rest of the world would find out, too. If he could convince Rose, he could convince a faceless asshole who is after him for information he didn't even have.

  Did they know who the fuck he was? Israel goddamn Leventhal. Ach du lieber himmel. He spent years seeding his name like a nightmare, and one job went sour and suddenly he was on a hit list. Fucking Derek Long.

  Immediately after faking his death, he got a haircut, shaving the sides of his head but keeping some of his curl on top. It looked awful but different enough. He put on a pair of ridiculously thick black frames with large lenses, and purchased about twenty black hoodies to cycle through the next few weeks. That would keep him hidden enough. After all, how many people really knew what Israel Leventhal looked like? And once Rose found his "body" there would be no one to suspect that it had ever been Israel.

  Israel Leventhal would be dead, and no one would see him coming, let alone the gravedigger that wanted him dead.

  Whoever this Woodmansey was, he was going to die.

  Time slowed when Israel closed his eyes. Somewhere between his thoughts and plans for Derek Long's information, he sank into darkness. He didn't remember opening his eyes. They felt as if they had never closed when he found himself standing on the corner of a road going up a steep hill. A fruit stand bloomed in the corner of his vision. The brown, yellow, and red buildings seemed to move from the distance into focus as they lined the streets.

  Israel couldn't make out the face of the man dressed in beige at the fruit stand, but it didn't matter to him. Glancing down at the street, he scuffed the cobble stone with his foot, trying to understand the geography and its familiarity.

  The skyline was ancient, even as a teenager on a beat-up red moped raced the street in front of him. Minarets ducked and weaved between modern apartments, and the tang of salt and fish told of the sea's closeness even if he could not see it.

  "Where are we?" The voice was feminine, and high. It was outside of Israel and this world. It bowled his senses over, like he was standing next to a church bell.

  Israel jerked his head find the source of it.

  Next to him, a woman floated. Her dress was dirty, and her face was gaunt and yellowed beneath dry and patchy blonde hair. Her ice blue pupils were surrounded by jaundiced whites as she stared wide-eyed at him.

  "Amanda?" He breathed, trying to stifle the shot of adrenaline that seared through his veins.

  Her thinning lips smiled to reveal her perfect teeth. The gums had receded, though, making her look skeletal and ghoulish. "Yes."

  Israel narrowed his eyes in confusion. "Why are you here?" His voice hissed out, low and quiet, as if afraid of the answer.

  Her eyes drifted from one edge of the horizon to the other, taking it all in. "Before we get to the why, I want to know the where."

  Israel swallowed. "I don't know."

  "Didn't you bring me here? You should know."

  Israel had never brought a ghost into the void before. He had heard other gravediggers did, but it was never someone they barely knew. It was always a memory so strong that they manipula
ted the void to create it. Israel knew this because on Rose's worse nights, his brother tossed him from nightmare to nightmare. When Israel noticed, he would go into the other man's dreams, and calm the tempest of Rose's mind, settling it into a steady, rolling wave that Rose could succumb to in peace. Rose's brother wasn't real, so surely Amanda wasn't either.

  "I'm feeling a bit awkward here." Amanda plucked at her high-necked dress. "Can you say something to me so I at least look like I belong?"

  "No one's real here. They don't care if you belong or not."

  "But where is here?"

  "We're in Istanbul," he said carefully, weighing his options. If she was from his thoughts, she should have known where they were. Unless, his subconscious was sabotaging him.

  "I've never been. Derek went a few times, but I only ever got to go to Mexico." Amanda sighed, her mouth forming a soft smile. "It's nice. A bit empty, though."

  "It's not…" Israel looked around. His Istanbul was empty. It was side-streets, back alleys, and bare apartments. But he knew very well that was not the Istanbul of everyone. For them, it was mobs of tourists in Sultanahmet, the thick wall of people at Taksim Square, and the pleasant commotion of the university district as students went to class crossing beneath the abandoned Roman aqueduct.

  But Israel's Istanbul was here, high on the hill, looking over the Bosphorus. Distant, and faraway from the drama of the world below.

  "We're not really in Istanbul, though, are we?" Amanda moved off the curb, and crooked her head upward to gaze at the clear blue sky. A crackle of speaker echoed through the street, and the afternoon prayer drifted in, a softer one bobbing in and out of the silences from a distant mosque a district away.

  Israel was not sure how to answer her question. Maybe they were in Istanbul. He did not want to discount it. He retraced his steps on how he got there, only able to piece together that his beginning started on this street corner by the fruit vendor before Amanda came.

  "No. It's the void," Israel said shortly. He moved down the street, giving no invitation to follow.

  Maybe he had died, and this was a gravedigger's ploy to get his secrets. If that were true, the person was as talented as Rose to manipulate the void to this level of detail. But how could they know about Istanbul? Why would they pose as Amanda? Surely, there were better ways to get information from him.

  "Why do you call this a void?" Amanda fell into step behind him. He didn't hear the sound of her feet on the pavement, and he glanced at her briefly to see that she was floating two inches off the ground. It made her seem taller than Israel.

  Israel shrugged. "Why do you ask so many questions?"

  "The last thing I remember was talking to you in my hospital bed after I overdosed. Now I'm in a city I've never seen before. Wouldn't you ask questions if you were me?"

  "I haven't discounted the idea that you are me, so I wouldn't want to waste time answering things I already know."

  "That hardly seems fair. I'm sure I can think of things you would never dream of."

  "Try me."

  Amanda's long teeth worried at her bottom lip as her eyes drifted upward in thought. She smirked when she said, "No one explained to me what a period was, so when I got it, I cried because I thought I was dying."

  Israel snorted. "That's… not beyond my realm of imagination, but I can concede that is probably not the first thing I would think to make up for you."

  "So, you'll answer my questions then, right?"

  Israel nodded slowly, still unsure.

  "Why do you call this," she gestured toward an apartment building with flaking pink paint and dark brown door with a gold knocker, "the void?"

  Israel sighed, but doesn't slow his pace. "Because it's nothing."

  "But the buildings? The people? Me? How can that be nothing?"

  "You're dead. You are nothing."

  She frowned and crossed her arms. "Doesn't seem like a void."

  "It's because we don't have a word to describe what this is." Unconsciously, he mimicked the words Rose had told him so long ago. "The void is creation and destruction. It's everything and nothing. In it, you exist and you don't."

  Amanda made a small hmm noise to herself, and let Israel forge down the hill toward a set of steps that carved upward between two apartment buildings. A pair of fourteen-year-olds sat on the bottom steps, their heads close to each other as they shared secrets in hushed whispers. Even when they turned their heads to watch Amanda's passing, Israel could not make out their faces.

  The Galata Bridge beckoned to Israel like a siren. He could not resist the call, even if he could not understand the streets. His memory was too hazy, and all he could remember was that he had to go down the hill. His eyes searched for the Galata Tower to guide him, glimpsing only small traces of its blue cap between the other buildings.

  "What's your name?" Amanda asked as he took them down alley way lined with old brick. "You never said it."

  Israel shook his head. "I did not."

  "So what is it?" When Israel did not answer, Amanda laughed. "Who am I going to tell? I'm dead."

  "You told me plenty when you died."

  "Yeah, but now? Who am I going to tell now? I'm far too rotted."

  Israel stopped, and leveled his gaze at her. "Yet you're here in the void with me."

  "We haven't established that yet," she said in a sing-song voice, clearly mocking him. "This could just be a dream."

  Israel pivoted, trying to get his bearings. It felt as if the street had changed, and they were moving up again. The geography of the void tangled his thoughts, and he tripped over them when he looked at Amanda.

  "Okay. Let's assume I'm a gravedigger, and you're dead. What do you still need to protect?" She flung up her hands suddenly. "No, wait. Don't answer that. I want you to trust me. But think to yourself if there is anything you need to protect, and if your name stops that from happening."

  "Israel," Israel finally said as he ducked down another alleyway, because there was only one thing left to protect, and he wasn't so sure he could. Rose was too unpredictable.

  "Israel." Amanda smiled as she followed. "Like the country?"

  "No, like the person the country is named after."

  "It was named after a person? I didn't know that."

  Israel sighed, wondering why his subconscious would need a history lesson in Judaism. He had lost interest in it long ago to protect himself from his parents' conflicting doctrines. "Israel was the name given unto Jacob after he wrestled with an angel and won. He went on to father the twelve tribes of Israel, which you probably know as the Jews."

  "Kind of seems like a weird name these days."

  "It's no more unusual than Joshua or Isaiah."

  "I guess, but there aren't any countries named Joshua or Isaiah. Why were you named Israel? Were your parents from there?"

  "No. They were from Germany. My dad was, at least."

  "You don't seem German."

  Israel shrugged. He didn't seem anything like the blood that flowed through his veins.

  "You speak it?"

  Israel nodded.

  "How nice. I wanted to learn another language."

  "Hm." There was nothing else to say.

  "You don't have an accent when you speak English." Her voice went high, as if she were considering what that could mean.

  "I grew up by an American base, so I went to an International school."

  Amanda pursed her lips and cocked her head. "You have a very complicated history."

  "And yours isn't?" Israel asked, even though he had already extensively researched her past before taking the job on her. It read like a bland John Water's movie, like if Breakfast Club was just about four kids staying in detention for an hour never speaking to one another.

  "Not really. I grew up in the Oranges in Jersey. I have… had, I guess... a little brother. My parents were from Pittsburgh and are still together. Not complicated at all."

  Israel snorted. "'Not complicated' says the woman who slept wi
th her husband's twin brother, had his child, and asked a man who dug up her corpse to lie about it. Says the woman who poisoned herself to frame her husband in one last effort to screw him over before she died of a brain tumor."

  Pursing her lips and quirking them to the side, Amanda said, "That does sound pretty complicated."

  In front of them, the city buildings broke apart to reveal the long Galata Bridge extending across the narrow strait of sea that separated Europe from Asia. But he could not see Eminönü district on the other side. Instead of the two spires and domed roofs of the mosque, Yeni Cami, dominating the skyline, he saw smoke. The back of his throat burned, and his nose rankled at the smell. He couldn't see what was beyond the bridge.

  "Shit," Amanda whispered under her breath. "What is supposed to be over there?"

  "The past," Israel said without thinking. He sat down on the street, ignoring the people that jostled him left to right. "Over there is where every great thing you think about Istanbul and Constantinople is. The Hagia Sophia. Topkapi palace. The Grand Bazaar."

  Amanda, though her feet were not touching the ground, seemed to go up on the tip of her toes as she peered across the water. "I can't see anything."

  "I know."

  "Why?"

  "Because the void is creation and destruction."

  "That is a shitty answer."

  Israel spread his hands dismissively. "Well, it's all I have, so you might as well be satisfied."

  "Do you think the void is telling you something?" Amanda's voice sounded like a distant chime. He hardly could make it out.

  Israel had heard that sometimes the void told you things about yourself; that your subconscious could form it when you were weak, and it would reflect a state of mind. Burying his head into his knees as he drew them closer, he hoped that wasn't what was happening.

  Amanda sat down next to him. The smell of must mingled with smoke and ash as she leaned against his shoulder. "If this means anything, I can only see two options. One. Your subconscious is denser than any poetry I've ever read. Two. You are pretentious as fuck."