The Complete Matt Jacob Series

by Klein, Zachary;

  “I’m an old-fashioned guy. You know how it is, love the gun you’re with.”

  “I thought you might visit,” she said, waving me to a chair.

  “Thought? Only thought? Damn, doesn’t the CIA know everything?”

  She ran her fingers through her short red hair. “The CIA, Mr. Jacob? Is that what you think? Why the CIA?”

  I sat down, but Deirdre remained on her feet, gun in hand. “That’s my question, lady. But when Washington Clifford behaves like a good doobie, it gets me wondering. There aren’t toomany institutions or agencies that can plant a pacifier between his teeth.” I paused then asked, “Idon’t have to tell you who Washington Clifford is, do I?”

  “No, you don’t.” Deirdre dragged a wooden chair opposite me and sat on it backwards, one arm across the top of its back, gun hand on her knee. “He worked well with my agency. Reluctantly, but efficiently.”

  “Are you smiling at my sharp deductions?” I asked looking around the room. A couple of packing crates were open in front of her kitchen and bedroom.

  “Sorry to disappoint you. I’m smiling because you deduced it wrong.”

  “Come on, Deirdre, you’re holding the gun. Do you really have to play plausible denial?”

  Her smile widened. “’Plausible denial?” Please, Mr. Jacob, you’ve read too many exposés. I’m afraid the books haven’t been helpful. Don’t feel badly, the writers usually screw it up too.”

  “Come on, Ms. Ryan, I’d hoped we could be honest with each other.”

  “We are, Mr. Jacob. You’re being honest when you accuse me of working for the CIA. I’m being honest when I tell you I do not.” She was enjoying the cat-and-mouse. Why not? She wore the longer fur.

  Despite her gun I grew irked. “I’m tired of the runaround, Deirdre—or whatever your real name is. You started the Avengers, helped the Never Agains set up Reb Yonah, then manipulated Kelly into the shootings. I know that and I believe Washington Clifford knows it. But you’re here, gun in hand, while everyone else is either fucked up, dead, jailed, or sitting on their butts. That takes drag, lady, serious drag.”

  “You would do well at horseshoes, Mr. Jacob. You definitely win points for getting close. Unfortunately, you have the wrong service and wrong country.”

  I heard her but it didn’t register. I pointed to the boxes. “Whatever your game, it’s over, so you’re out of here. What area will be fucked up with your shadow next? I didn’t think the CIA was allowed to work in the States.”

  “I’m not staying in the States. I’m going home.”

  “Home? You mean the Agency brought you in from overseas? Ireland?”

  “I only look Irish, Mr. Jacob. My home is in Israel.”

  Her words finally landed. Slashed right through my annoyance, mistaken analysis, and into my gut. My mouth dropped open and I floundered for something to say. Israel. Redheaded, reserved, Deirdre Ryan was from Israel. “You work for Israeli Intelligence?”

  “Draw your own conclusions, Mr. Jacob.” Deirdre added with another brittle smile, “Perhaps Mr. Jacob is too formal. May I call you Matthew?”

  I was too busy rearranging everything in my head to answer.

  “You look perplexed, Matthew. What are you thinking?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m thinking. I couldn’t figure out why the CIA was involved, and this makes even less sense.”

  “Why do you say that?” she asked with interest.

  “You created the Avengers, had them murder a Rabbi, and now tell me you work for Israel. You don’t see something wrong with the picture?”

  “Truthfully,” she said, “I see someone way out of his league. You are naive, Matthew, far too naive to be mixed up in this.”

  I started to talk then pressed my lips closed. I wasn’t sure I wanted my cherry busted. I didn’t know my odds on staying alive but worried that they dropped with every new revelation.

  It wasn’t my choice. “To understand why I’m here, why I was sent here, you have to look at the larger picture,” Deirdre broke the silence. “Year after year your government’s financial and moral support have diminished. We understand this. Oil, changing alliances, new world order.” She paused then asked, “As a Jew, Matthew, doesn’t the term ‘new world order’ bother you?”

  “Most order bothers me.”

  “That doesn’t come as a complete surprise. On the other hand, you’ve been quite orderly in your persistence.”

  “It’s been order through ignorance.”

  She nodded. “That’s partially true. But don’t underestimate yourself. You were on to me very quickly. What made you suspicious?”

  “I found a note from you in Kelly’s apartment.”

  Her smile disappeared and her hairline wrinkles deepened. “Surprising. I turned his apartment but didn’t find any note. Where was it?”

  “In a book of love poems.”

  Deirdre made a sour face. “How did you know it was me?”

  “I saw you leave Kelly’s, followed you to Collins’s church, then back to your house. Same address as the one on the note.”

  Deirdre’s smile returned, though not as wide. “You’re better than I thought, Matthew. I’m not used to surprises.”

  “Let’s stop the boogie, Deirdre.” I pointed to the gun on her knee. “Toss the bun and get to the meat. It’s confusing enough without the bullshit.”

  “It’s really not complicated, Matthew. My country simply won’t let American support fade away. Our existence depends on your public and private monies. Anti-Semitism in the United States keeps the money flowing.”

  The hamburger was tough to swallow. “You’re telling me you created the Avengers to promote Jew-baiting?”

  “You sound shocked, Matthew?”

  I was shocked. “Sean Kelly worked for Israel too?”

  “First of all, Matthew, I work for the good of Israel. You won’t find my agency listed on any bureaucratic flow-chart. Does that shock you as well? Sean’s allegiance was to Ireland. He thought he was working for the IRA.”

  “But you convinced him to start the Avengers and terrorize the Hasids?”

  “I helped convince him,” she corrected. “Brady Collins had a lot to do with it.”

  I started to swallow the meat. “And you owned Collins?” I shook my head in perverse appreciation. Once you got on the bus it was easy to keep rolling.

  Deirdre returned the admiration. “Now you’re catching on. Brady Collins had been in deep cover for more than twenty years. Since he’d been a teenager. Over the years he had siphoned a great deal of money thought to be going to the IRA. It was a truly brilliant operation. Unfortunately for him, we knew about it. Knew about it for a long time before we decided to use it. How could he possibly refuse? He either worked with us or went out of business. Life’s a bitch, isn’t it? Always a choice between the lesser of two evils.”

  “Illusion of choice. Collins worked with you but still got burned.”

  “It’s a pity how some things just don’t work out. Still, he’s much better off this way. If the IRA had found him out…”

  I couldn’t rip my eyes off her gun, but found it impossible to stop talking. “So you and Collins had Kelly trash the Hasids?”

  “Trash isn’t the word I would choose.”

  “And every time another anti-Semitic incident hits the newspapers, Israel plants more trees.”

  “You’ve got a rich sense of humor, Matthew.”

  “I’m not feeling very funny.” My irritation and amazement were shifting into a deeper anger. “So why bother with the Never Agains? Why set up Simchas Torah? The Avengers were alreadydoing what you wanted.”

  “If I may use your metaphor, local newspaper stories don’t plant many trees. We have a longstanding relationship with the Never Agains. Once we learned about Reb Yonah’s overtures…”

  “So you cooked up the holiday celebration?”

  “An incident like that is heard around the world. It wasn’t an opportunity to pass up.�
��

  My confusion was gone, my amazement with it. But my anger was just starting to perk. I felt my body harden, my insides begin to chill. “Do you hear yourself? What are you? Who are you, anyway?”

  “I’m a Jew, Matthew. I’m someone who believes in the primacy of a Jewish homeland at any cost. Committed to the defense and life of my country. I’m a patriot.”

  “Open your eyes, Patriot, you’re not in your fucking country. Since when is the first line of Israeli defense located in the United States?”

  Deirdre chuckled. “From our inception, actually. But you miss the point. We go where circumstance dictates, act when the time is right. This particular opportunity happened to be here and I was the person sent.” Deirdre’s green eyes blazed with the passion of her commitment. “Only Israel can truly guarantee the continued existence of the Jewish people.”

  “Some Jewish people.”

  She ignored me. “Our survival depends on my country’s willingness and ability to effectively use every opening we’re given. We came to this community because our knowledge about Collins gave us entry. Rabbi Saperstein unwittingly handed us a chance to build upon what we had.”

  “You sound like a goddamn textbook, lady. Those were real people pumping red on the street. Rabbi Dov will never make it to your homeland, will he? Or Sean Kelly to his?”

  Her endorphins downshifted. “You are old-fashioned. It’s becoming.”

  “And you’re one cold spy. No coming in for you, is there? Were the diamonds part of your fundraising effort?”

  She shrugged. “I couldn’t decide if you wanted me to discover you had been here or had just fucked up. But I hadn’t realized you found the roughs.” She shook her head. “The shakedown was Kelly’s independent contribution to the program. When he saw he couldn’t get cash from Saperstein, he accepted the diamonds. Roughs,” she sneered, “he wanted to give them to me.”

  “Don’t sound so disparaging. Romance convinced him to pull the trigger, didn’t it? See, Deirdre, I don’t think Kelly shot the Rabbi on his own. Thief, extortionist, willing anti-Semite, sure. But without you, without loving you, I don’t believe he’d have played kamikaze. It’s one thing if he’s busted for packing, another if he uses. You saw bigger headlines, more trees, and played Kelly like a Clapton guitar riff.”

  As I finished speaking something scratched at my head but I couldn’t pinpoint it. I couldn’t even try. It took all my control and focus to keep from raging. I didn’t like my chances as is. If I lost my temper, I’d like them less.

  “Kelly thought he was cunning,” Deirdre said flatly. Her eyes suddenly became hard, opaque. “But he was stupid.”

  I thought she was getting ready to use her gun and I froze in my seat. I let out my breath when she continued to talk.

  “Sean was a sponge. You dripped on him and he soaked it up, squeezed him and everything dribbled back out,” Deirdre sneered.

  “You did some heavy dripping, lady.” I ran my eyes up and down her lithe, tight body. Maybe she hadn’t liked fucking him for Israel’s greater good. “And I bet you’re a champ. Good enough to find people’s weakness and shark them. Only you don’t eat, just nibble until they do what you want.

  “And I bet your marks even like the nibble. Was it you or Collins who wanted me dead?” I was only half interested in her answer. Kelly still picked at my attention. Kelly, and the gun in Deirdre’s hand.

  “Does it matter?” She must have seen some emotion cross my face because she added, “I didn’t order you killed. Collins panicked. He hadn’t expected his visitors when he invited you to the meeting. You simply chose the wrong time to add to his anxiety.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you worked very hard to stop him?”

  She looked at me like I was a stupid schoolboy. “Please, Matthew. You really do personalize too much.”

  “Hey lady, you don’t get personal about anything. You have a jones about your homeland. But who do you want a homeland for? Jews? You instigate hatred against Jews. Rabbis? You left one dead on the street and vultured Reb Yonah. Even Kelly cared more about his own than that.”

  “You’re quite eloquent, Matthew. Eloquent but shortsighted. You sound like the social worker you once were.

  “Don’t look surprised, we have our sources,” she added. “The world is more complex than the simple right or wrong you make it out to be. There are larger tides—of much greater importance—than any particular individual. More important than any particular tragedy. I regret the Rabbi’s death but Kelly got carried away. I told you, Sean was stupid. Stupid and hotheaded.”

  I finally knew what was bothering me. Almost everything Deirdre said about Kelly contradicted what I had learned about him. He was a planner, a detail man, not someone prone to self-destruction. Not even for love. Tell me Blue got carried away and I’d believe it. But I didn’t believe Sean Kelly spontaneously murdered Reb Dov. I didn’t think he had murdered the Rabbi at all.

  I took a deep breath as the final fragment of my confusion cleared. “You were there that night, weren’t you? If you can do Irish, you can certainly act like an Orthodox Jewish woman. Hell, you can do anyone you want because there ain’t no real you! You shot Rabbi Dov. Sean wasn’t a hothead. He was as surprised as everyone else when a gun went off. Let me ask you, did you kill them both?”

  Deirdre stared at me long and hard before she answered. “I guess it’s grow-up time for you, Matthew Jacob.” Her mouth was drawn tight across her teeth, her eyes unyielding. “I didn’t have the luxury of waiting until I was an adult.” Deirdre’s face twisted into a mirthless grin. “And I had no one to teach me the facts of life, either. You see, Matthew, my parents survived the camps but not the experience. They escaped the ovens but never, for a moment, the fear. And from the fear came only silence.”

  Deirdre ground her jaw and ran her free hand rapidly through her hair. “I read a study once that placed a dog in a cage and randomly zapped different parts of the cage with electricity. After a short while the dog quit trying to out-guess the pain and just sat waiting for the shocks. No matter that they stopped the electricity, the dog kept sitting and waiting. That’s what happened to my parents.”

  She stared at me. “Can you imagine living in a house where the shades were never up? Windows never opened more than a crack? Where conversations, all conversations, were held in whispers? Where the only visitors, and I mean only, were those who also survived the camps but not the fear? I don’t think you can understand what it means to grow up surrounded by the living dead. Too ashamed to have friends, since friends might want to visit my house. The gloom, Matthew, I grew up in perpetual gloom.”

  Deirdre gave a hard shake of her head, as if to rid it of memories. “I willed myself to resist that fear. I refused to become like that dog. I swore that my life would be dedicated to making certain that no Jewish child would ever be forced to grow up in that gloom again. There were limits to the usefulness of the Simchas Torah operation. It was my decision to extend the benefits. If you pull your head out of the sand, think like a Jew, and look around, you’d see how enormous those benefits are.”

  I felt nauseous and my hand gripped the seat of my chair. “Extend the benefits? Is that how you explained it to the cops? Or was that someone else’s job?”

  She dismissed the question with a quick wave of the gun. “There hasn’t been much to explain. Pandemonium is the perfect operational cover. By the time I disappeared, Kelly was holding the gun that killed Dov. Rabbi Saperstein’s decision to fire his own gun made things even simpler. He was wonderful television while arrangements were processed through private channels. LikeI told you, Clifford is a professional.” Deirdre shrugged. “My agency had no choice but to protect me. And frankly, your officials were quite grateful for our information concerning Brady Collins.”

  Deirdre stood, stretched, and walked across the room. She raised her left hand and flashed her long fingernail. “I dislike lying, Matthew. But I dig this sharp fingernail into my palm toremember
our people’s history, our suffering. I’m not a social worker. There are things about my work I don’t enjoy, but I do them. Sometimes those things are ugly and distasteful. But I do them anyway. I do them because I believe in something larger, something more important than myself. Something that will still exist long after I join the Rabbi and Kelly.”

  She bent down, picked up my gun, and walked back in my direction. “There are two commandments in my job. Believe in the cause. Be the last one standing.”

  I felt my body brace and my mind bolted in a thousand different directions. None of them led to a way out. “Are you going to find killing me distasteful?” I asked in a hoarse voice.

  She motioned me to get up and I willed my legs to obey.

  “Distasteful,” she said raising my gun. “Of course I’d find killing you distasteful.” She smiled. “I don’t often speak as personally as I have with you. But I’m not going to kill you, Matthew. You can’t cause me any trouble and you’re not in my way. I have no reason to kill you.” She made a sudden motion and tossed my gun. To my undying credit, I recovered in time to catch it before it landed on the floor.

  I grasped the cold metal in my damp palm, my rage and fright momentarily smothered by relief. But when my safety dug in, the anger blew out. “So I’m supposed to walk away pretending you don’t exist?”

  “For all intents and purposes, Matthew, by tomorrow I won’t exist. I don’t understand your dissatisfaction. We helped your friend Washington Clifford close down Collins’s operation, and I’ve already been told your other friend, Roth, will be able to keep the Never Agains from moving up here. What’s your complaint? Do you still carry around some antiquated fantasy about crime and punishment, guilt and innocence?”

  Deirdre unhooked the silencer from her pistol, placing it along with the gun on the seat of her chair. “I couldn’t chance your being irrational,” she explained. “I apologize if it led to the wrong conclusion and made you uncomfortable.”

  I don’t know if it was the words or her matter-of-fact delivery. My rage screamed for action. Deirdre might be gone tomorrow, but she was here now. And very real. If I let her disappear she would just turn up somewhere else wearing a different name and hair color. Someplace where more unsuspecting people would be manipulated, and perhaps killed in the name of her commitment. I lifted my arm and pointed my gun at her face. “Washington Clifford has a job, Roth has a reputation and career. I just work for myself.”