Tongues of Fire

by Peter Abrahams

  “Push, honey.” Paulette pushed. The doctor pulled on the forceps, very hard. “Push. Push. Push.” Paulette grunted. “Okay, honey.” In the mirror Rehv saw, deep inside her body, a narrow pale crescent that had not been there before. He couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  “Push.” The pale crescent came closer. The doctor did something with a scalpel at the base of Paulette’s vagina. Blood spurted. Rehv barely noticed. He watched the crescent coming closer and closer. It was no longer a crescent at all, but a sphere, round and hard and matted with wet dark hair.

  “Last time, honey.” Paulette pushed. He heard a baby cry, somewhere far away. The baby cried again, and he knew suddenly that it was his baby, crying inside Paulette. The doctor took the hard sphere gently in her hands and turned it very slightly. Slowly the sphere squeezed through the opening, inch by inch. Then, crying and bloody, his boy slid out into the doctor’s hands. She held it up for Paulette to see.

  “A perfect baby,” the Filipino nurse said. She laid it, him, on Paulette’s heaving breast. He stopped crying. He lay quietly, his head turned toward Rehv. Rehv wanted to touch the side of his face, but he was afraid. The baby opened his eyes. He seemed to look directly at him. His eyes were big and dark and alert. He was looking at him. He was everything Rehv had wanted. But for the first time Rehv understood he was his son as well.

  “Here,” the Filipino nurse said. She was handing him a piece of paper tissue. He realized that tears were rolling down his face, and he wiped them away.

  “Thank you,” he said. She had gone. They had all gone: the nurses, the doctor. He had wanted to thank her too.

  “Are you all right?” he asked Paulette. She nodded. He saw that she was crying. “What’s wrong?” But he knew what was wrong.

  Paulette held the baby on her breast. Very still, he lay there, watching his father. After a while he turned his head a little and moved his lips against Paulette’s breast. She helped him. He suckled.

  “He’s a beautiful boy,” Paulette said.

  “Yes.”

  “We could stay together.” It was a question. They both knew the answer. He shook his head.

  The door opened. A nurse stood there, one they had not seen before. “Time to go up to the ward.”

  Paulette reached out for him, gripped his arm. “I want to give him a name,” she said.

  “What name?”

  “Paul.”

  “All right.” The boy would need an American name, he thought. For now.

  The nurse began to wheel them away. The baby felt the movement and stopped suckling. His eyes were still opened wide. He kept them on his father as he disappeared out the door.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Krebs heard a quiet metallic click followed by a very soft thud. The mail. Sliding through the slot. Falling on the carpet in the hall. Yesterday, bills for water and electricity, notice from the credit card company that he had exceeded his maximum. The day before, the phone bill, with an enclosed threat to cut off service if payment was not received by some date or other.

  He looked at the clock. The hour hand pointed into the gap between four and five. The minute hand was right behind it, a tiny sliver of white clockface away. Four-twenty-two. But as he watched the sliver did not become tinier, disappear; the minute hand did not gain ground, pass over the hour hand, turn on the speed toward the far turn at six and up the other side, in the daily race to noon and midnight that always ended in a dead heat, the hour hand coming from nowhere to tie. They were not racing today. Time had stopped.

  Four-twenty-two. He had probably gone to bed by then, perhaps he had fallen asleep. Or had he still been sitting in front of the television, watching unfamiliar actors relive the Oklahoma land grab in black and white? And eating: three hamburgers with everything—he had forgotten to say, “No pickles”—and two orders of fries. With ketchup.

  Krebs pushed back the covers and got out of bed. The curtains, not quite closed, admitted a shaft of late September sunlight that bisected the dark room like a wall of golden glass. He drew them completely together. The wall vanished. He began picking through the shadowy pile of clothing by the foot of the bed. He didn’t bother going to the chest of drawers or the closet: They were empty. All his clothing was in the pile, waiting to go to the cleaner’s. It had been waiting there for a month or two.

  Krebs pulled on a pair of gray flannels. He left the button unfastened and the zipper halfway down because he had to. His flesh bulged over his waistband like a scoop of ice cream too big for the cone. In the bathroom he urinated but neglected to give his penis a shake after he had finished, or perhaps he hadn’t quite finished, and when he started down the stairs he felt a warm dribble seep into the flannel and spread across his thigh.

  The mail lay fanned on the floor. He bent down to pick it up: a letter from the bank, no doubt to remind him that his mortgage payment was overdue, something from a record club, something else from a skiing magazine, a letter from France that should have been delivered next door, and a bill from a florist in Raleigh, North Carolina, addressed to Alice. He would write on it, “Not at this address,” and leave it in the slot for the postman, as he always did. Nothing but bills ever came for her.

  Krebs stood up, thinking about Raleigh, North Carolina. He was aware of movement outside, and glanced through the small round window in the top of the door. Bunting was walking up the path. A long black car was parked at the curb. Quickly Krebs stepped to the side, away from the door.

  The doorbell rang. It rang again. Knuckles knocked against the glass. Then something scraped inside the lock, and Krebs knew Bunting was coming in whether he opened the door or not. He opened it and, conscious of his unshaven face, his new fat, and his stained trousers, said: “What do you want?”

  Bunting responded to his words, not his tone. “No time to explain now,” he said, brushing past Krebs and into the hall. “I’ll tell you in the car. Throw some clothes on. You’ve got two minutes.”

  “I don’t have to take orders from you anymore.”

  “Of course you do, Krebs. You’re back on the team. Unless you’ve found some better work, that is.”

  A daydream was coming true, like finding a sack of money on the sidewalk or a beautiful girl in your bed. Krebs knew that daydreams didn’t come true in life, not in his life. “Why?”

  “Don’t be so suspicious, Krebs,” Bunting replied. “You were right. We were wrong.”

  “I was right?”

  “Yes. About Isaac Rehv.”

  Bunting waited in the living room. Bunting in his hand-tailored charcoal gray suit, with his pink skin, his prematurely gray hair, and reading glasses hung around his neck, waited in a little clearing in the refuse: fast-food cartons, moldy spareribs, beer cans, empty bottles, comic boks—Porky Pig, Archie, Superman. Upstairs Krebs splashed cold water on his face and wished he had time to shave. He noticed a hair growing out of his nostril—so long, how could he have missed it?—and yanked it out on his way to the bedroom. He put on a shirt and jacket less wrinkled than the rest, and hurried down the stairs, breathing hard.

  “You look like hell, Krebs,” Bunting said as they went out the door.

  Krebs and Bunting sat in the back seat. “The city,” Bunting told the driver, who started down Willow Crescent at a speed that made a small boy look up as he pedaled his tricycle along the sidewalk.

  Bunting reached down to the floor and picked up a small reel-to-reel tape recorder. He pressed a button, listened to himself say, “That’s not dill,” and pressed the fast forward. “I won’t bore you with the whole thing,” he told Krebs. Bunting found the part of the tape he wanted, and sat back, the recorder on his knee.

  A man said: “Believe me, I’d like to help you.” He had a soft Israeli accent and sounded tired and old.

  Bunting said: “Then tell us about the Haganah.”

  The old man laughed, but he didn’t put much into it: “There is no secret about that. I was with the Haganah in the forties. I know nothing of this new
Haganah, if it exists at all.”

  Bunting said: “Okay, Dennis.”

  The old man screamed in pain.

  “Hell,” Bunting said, stopping the tape. “That’s not it.” He ran it forward. Krebs found a striped necktie in one of the pockets of his jacket and put it on. “Maybe here,” Bunting said. He pressed the play button and turned to Krebs, a worried look in his eyes. “Checks and stripes, Krebs?”

  The old man was crying. He made a high nasal sound, but with plenty of volume, Krebs noticed, like a small child.

  Bunting said: “Take this away.” There was a rattling sound Krebs could not identify. Bunting said: “I can’t eat cafeteria swill one more day. From now on we’ll order from that deli across the street.”

  Someone said: “The Belly Deli?”

  Bunting said: “Right.”

  The other man said: “I think they close early.”

  Bunting said: “Find out.” Footsteps. A door opened and closed.

  The old man cried.

  Bunting said: “Have you got a cigarette, Dennis?” A match was struck. The sound was very good: Krebs could hear it scrape against the sandpaper strip. He glanced at Bunting and saw him dipping into his pocket for cigarettes. He lit one with a gold lighter and began filling the car with blue smoke.

  The old man’s crying turned to sniffles, shivers, nothing.

  Bunting said: “Feeling better?”

  So quietly Krebs could barely hear him, the old man said: “Yes.”

  Bunting said: “Good. Where is the girl?”

  The old man said: “My granddaughter?”

  Bunting said: “Yes, yes.”

  The old man said: “She died that night. She was badly wounded. We couldn’t stop the bleeding.”

  Bunting said: “Where’s the body?”

  The old man said: “In the ocean. I rented a little boat at Montauk.”

  Bunting said: “We’ll want to see this boat.”

  The old man said: “I can show you.”

  Bunting said: “You’re telling me you drove to Montauk, carried the body onto the boat, rode out to sea, and dumped it over the side. How old are you, Uri?”

  The old man said: “Sixty-eight.”

  Bunting said: “I don’t believe you did all that yourself.” There was a long pause. Krebs looked down and watched the shiny brown tape spin silently around the spools. After a while Bunting said: “Dennis.”

  The old man said: “No. No.”

  Bunting said: “Wait, Dennis.”

  The old man said: “Rehv helped me.”

  Bunting said: “Rehv? The waiter?” Krebs bent closer to the machine.

  The old man said: “Yes. But he’s not just a waiter. It was his idea in the first place. He took the bodies to Montauk and waited for me on a beach. I brought the boat along the coast until I found him. Then we took them out to sea.”

  Bunting said: “Bodies.” There was another pause, not as long as the first.

  The old man said: “Abu Fahoum’s bodyguard. Rehv killed him later that night. In self-defense.”

  Bunting said: “And Abu Fahoum?”

  The old man said: “I know nothing about Abu Fahoum, except what I read in the newspapers.” The tape sped on. Another match was struck. Krebs heard it fall with a very slight ring into a glass ashtray. In a low voice the old man added: “But the bodyguard was killed with a knife as well.” Then, for no apparent reason, the old man began to cry again.

  Bunting pressed the stop button. “There’s a lot more, but nothing to concern you immediately.” He placed the tape recorder carefully on the floor, glancing at Krebs. “You look a bit better,” he said.

  “I’d like to question him,” Krebs said.

  Bunting shook his head. “Too late. He’s already transferred.”

  “Transferred?”

  “The usual way.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Last night. Early this morning, in fact.”

  “You’ve got Rehv then?”

  “Not yet. We tried that gallery in SoHo, but he had already gone. We’re watching it though, and the restaurant. We’ll get him when he comes in to work.” Bunting spoke a little faster than he normally did, and Krebs knew that there had been a mistake. Perhaps they had not moved fast enough.

  “There’s one place we could look while we’re waiting,” Krebs said. He told Bunting. Bunting told the driver.

  Traffic grew denser as they neared the city. They crossed the bridge at less than walking pace. The sun turned the dirty air to smoky gold. Inside the car it was smoky blue. Looking out, Krebs realized that he had hardly been aware of spring and summer. If you watched enough television it was always winter. “Does Armbrister know about this?” he asked.

  “Armbrister? No.” His eyes straight ahead, Bunting inhaled smoke and let it out with a little sigh. “I’m not sure what to do with old Armbrister. Now that you’ve taken over his job.” Thoughts, too many to examine individually, burst in Krebs’s mind like a meteor shower: Sell the house, run, do push-ups, shave, fire Armbrister’s secretary. The hard-assed girl. And others he would dwell on later.

  The driver parked in front of a brick apartment building that was slowly sinking through the class structure, working its way down generation by generation while its occupants were trying to go the other way. A black man in a pearl gray suit came out of the building, carrying a small package wrapped in brown paper. He was dressed better than Bunting.

  Krebs stared up at the facade. “I don’t know the apartment number, but it was that window—two from the end and six up.” He led Bunting into the building. The inner door was held open by a pail of brown water. They rode the old elevator to the sixth floor and followed the worn carpet to the end of the hall. Number 606. “It has to be here,” Krebs said softly. He knocked twice.

  The door opened as his knuckles tapped it the second time. A tiny old black woman in a wheelchair faced them across the threshold. “What has to be here?” she said. Even though the apartment was warm she wore a wool blanket over her knees.

  “We’re very sorry to bother you, madam,” Bunting said. “We’re looking for a man named Isaac Rehv.”

  “Name means nothing to me.” She pulled the blanket a little higher.

  “We’re looking anyway,” Krebs said. He grabbed the arms of the wheelchair and pushed the old woman into the living room.

  “Go on,” she said. “Kill me. Do you think I care?”

  Krebs and Bunting left her there to search the apartment. They found nothing. When they returned to the living room she was in the corner watching television, sitting less than three feet from the screen. Without looking at them she said, “Take all I got. Kill me. I’m ready.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” Bunting said gently. “We don’t want to hurt you. We’re just looking for Isaac Rehv. We don’t want to hurt him either.”

  “Just do it,” the old woman said, rolling a little closer to the television. “I’m ready.”

  Krebs took a step in her direction, but Bunting took him by the arm and turned him toward the door. They went outside and sat in the car. “Do you want me to stay here?” Krebs asked. “Or will you send someone else?”

  Bunting lit another cigarette and examined its burning tip. “Are you sure about the apartment?” he said at last.

  “Two over and six up. Of course I’m sure. I saw him look through the blinds.”

  “But it was night,” Bunting said mildly. “It would have been easy to make a mistake.”

  “I haven’t made any on this one so far.”

  “All right,” Bunting said, and he asked the driver to give him the telephone.

  “Goddamn it,” Krebs said suddenly. He jerked the door open. “We should have cut her phone cables.”

  “Krebs. She’s senile.”

  “Maybe.” Krebs ran into the building and up the stairs, taking them two at a time at first, then singly, finally walking. He had not realized how badly out of condition he was. When he reache
d number 606 he was panting. He knocked. This time the door did not open immediately. He knocked again. And again. It was not going to open at all. He turned the handle. It was unlocked. He went inside. She was gone.

  Early morning. Isaac Rehv, carrying two small packages wrapped in brown paper, unlocked the door to number 606 and walked in. The old woman was watching television. He stood beside the wheelchair for a few minutes, watching with her. It was the movie critic again. “The liberal middle class has a very weak stomach these days, and it’s getting weaker. It can’t digest anything raw—everything has to be sugarcoated. And this applies especially to any sort of violence. I’m talking about the kind of liberals who—” The interviewer smiled and held up his hand like a traffic cop: “We’ll find out all about it after this short break.” The movie critic smiled a thin smile. It was just as false as the interviewer’s, but at least it meant something. Talking intestinal bacteria appeared on the screen.

  “I’ve brought these packages,” Rehv said.

  “Shh.”

  He waited until the intestinal bacteria were dead. “One is for Paulette. It’s her money. The other is for Cohee. He’ll come for it soon.” He laid the packages on the old woman’s lap. Without looking she took them one at a time in her bent, arthritic hands and tucked them under her blanket.

  “When’s she coming home?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Then she’s going away.”

  “Just for a few days. To the Bahamas. She’s tired.”

  “Me too.”

  The movie critic reappeared and began talking about movies she didn’t like. Her mouth moved very fast. Rehv looked down at the old woman and saw that her eyes were closed. He turned to go.

  The old woman’s hand reached up and caught his. “I want to see that baby,” she said. Her hand was cold. “Please. I’ve got a right. He’s my great-grandson.” She opened her eyes and twisted her body around in the wheelchair so she could see him: eyes staring up at him, blurred and wet.