Never Again

by Harvey A. Schwartz

  Sarah finally broke the silence.

  “I don’t know how I can thank the two of you for getting me away from there,” she said. “Judy, if you hadn’t been so quick, and so persuasive, who knows where we would be now? Thank you so much.”

  “No big deal,” Katz replied. “I was lucky my asshole of a boss couldn’t find time to meet last week to take my ID. If he had, we’d be heading for military detention right now, all three of us.”

  The three sat silent, their minds swirling with paranoia. Katz imagined herself in a striped prison suit, her hair shaved off, stick thin, entering the shower building.

  She startled Shapiro and Sarah with a scream. “Nana. Nana was supposed to be in Washington. They’ve taken my nana to a camp.”

  The sky darkened as they crossed New Jersey and on into Connecticut. Shapiro broke the silence.

  “I wonder whether the president was blowing smoke up our asses with that atom bomb talk,” he said. “It sure reminded me of another president who told fairy tales about weapons of mass destruction. I can’t believe Quaid had the balls to try the same thing.”

  Sarah Goldberg remained silent throughout this exchange. Finally, she realized that these two people had saved her from being dragged to a concentration camp. They could be trusted.

  “Actually, there may be some truth to what the president said,” she whispered, hardly believing that she was about to reveal the secret she’d learned only days earlier and sworn to protect.

  Both Shapiro and Katz swiveled to look at the woman in the back seat. The car swerved and Shapiro turned back to look at the road.

  The tension, fear and anxiety that had built in Sarah Goldberg throughout the day, anxiety first over what she would say when she walked up to the microphone to address half a million people, fear and tension from the events that prevented her from speaking, all let loose in a torrent of words as she spewed forth the story of her friend Debra Reuben, of Lt. Chaim Levi and his death, of the sailboat and, finally, of the atom bomb at the bottom of the swimming pool in her suburban Portland home.

  The car was silent when the woman stopped speaking.

  “Holy fucking shit,” was Shapiro’s first comment.

  “Mega-dittos, Rush,” was all Katz could say as they drove on through the night, heading back to Massachusetts.

  Maybe, Katz thought, there is an alternative to the shower building.

  CHAPTER 58

  Shapiro left the two women at Judy Katz’s apartment in Boston shortly before midnight. Sarah Goldberg would spend the night there, then take the first Downeaster train in the morning from Boston to Portland. She’d telephoned her husband from a pay phone at a McDonald’s in Hartford, Connecticut. Surprisingly, there was no answer at her home. She left a cryptic message assuring Abram she was safe and would be home the following morning.

  Shapiro continued driving north of Boston, arriving at his house a little after midnight. He could hear the waves slapping at the dock at the end of the wooden walkway leading to the salt marsh behind the house. The full moon shining on the water brought to mind a memory of a magical high tide night when he and Sally paddled their kayaks over the flooded marsh while the full moon reflected off the water’s surface, blurring the line between sea and sky. They felt as if they were gliding through the air.

  Shapiro drove down his dead-end street without noticing the dark Ford Crown Victoria parked under a tree blocking the nearest streetlamp. Two men sat in the car, taking turns napping and watching the rearview mirror.

  Shapiro pulled into his driveway and was surprised to see a car parked there and a light on in the house.

  The television was on in the family room, where he found his wife’s mother, Emily Spofford, sleeping on the couch. Shapiro turned off the set, then placed his hand on his mother-in-law’s shoulder and shook her. Her eyes opened. She yelped, startled.

  “Emily, what are you doing here?” Shapiro said. “Where’s Sally? Where’s Adam?” He looked toward the stairs leading to his bedroom. “Are they sleeping?”

  His mother-in-law whimpered.

  “What the hell is going on, Emily?”

  “Ben, oh, poor Ben,” the woman said, tears now running down her cheeks. “Oh, Ben, they’re gone. They’re both gone. I’m so sorry for you. Oh, Ben, it’s such a tragedy.”

  “What do you mean, gone? Gone where? Where are they, Emily?”

  “Ben,” she replied. “They’re dead, poor Sally and little Adam. They were at that . . . that mall, that shopping mall when that horrible bomb went off, when that goddamn Jew set off—” She stopped abruptly. “I kept calling the house but she never answered. I called all through the night.

  “Then, just yesterday, two police officers came to the house. They asked me if I was Sally Spofford’s mother. They asked if I knew where you were and I said I thought you’d gone away for a few days. Sally told me you insisted on going to that Jewish demonstration in Washington. I didn’t tell the police that, of course.

  “And they showed me Sally’s bag, that ugly Betsy Karen bag with the big yellow daisy on it that she bought last year. Ben, it was all torn up. It was horrible, black marks all over it. Then they told me they’d recovered what they believed was her body, at the North Shore Mall, at the food court. Oh, Ben, they said they weren’t sure it was her, they couldn’t identify the body. They asked me to come to the morgue and I did and it was her—at least I’m pretty sure it was her. I hardly looked.”

  Shapiro grabbed the woman by the shoulders.

  “Adam,” he shouted. “What about Adam?”

  “Oh, Ben,” the woman cried. “I asked them where Adam was. I explained that she had a son. His name was Adam. They told me there were some children they couldn’t identify, five children. And Ben, I had to look at all of them, those horrible, broken bodies of children. Adam was the last one they showed me. He looked so beautiful, so peaceful. Then they pulled the cover all the way off his face and, oh, Ben, he had no mouth, no chin.”

  The woman collapsed onto the sofa. Shapiro stood in front of her, shaking. White spots appeared in front of his eyes, dancing across the surface of his eyeballs. The next thing he knew, he was on the floor in a heap, cold, clammy sweat on his forehead. He sat on the floor, unable to move, his heart about to explode.

  Shapiro startled from the sound of somebody pounding on the front door. He stumbled to the door, his knees weak and trembling.

  “Who the hell is it?” he yelled.

  “FBI, Mr. Shapiro. Open the door.”

  He turned the porch light on and opened the door. Two men stood there. Without asking, they walked past him into the hall. One man spoke.

  “Ben Shapiro,” he said, holding a photograph of Shapiro’s driver’s license. “We’ve been waiting for you for quite a while, Mr. Shapiro. We need to speak with you. Right away. It’s important.”

  “You might say it’s a matter of national security, Mr. Shapiro,” the other man said, moving to stand beside Shapiro.

  “This is the wrong time for this,” he said softly. “My wife and child have been murdered. I can’t do this right now.”

  He reached for the door.

  “You have to leave now,” he said.

  One of the men placed his palm on the door and shoved it closed.

  “You don’t understand, Mr. Shapiro,” he said. “We’ve been sitting out there all day and halfway through the night. We’re not going to do this some other time. We’re going to talk now, right now.”

  The other man placed his hand on Shapiro’s upper arm.

  Shapiro gestured with his head toward the left, toward the kitchen, away from the family room.

  “We can sit in there,” he said. “I’ll make coffee. I need it.”

  “Fine,” the first agent said. “That’s better.”

  Shapiro turned toward the kitchen, then stopped, frozen. He looked up at the men. FBI, they would know—maybe Sally’s mother was wrong. “My wife, my son,” he mumbled. “Did they really die?”

>   The two men glanced at one another, surprised. “We don’t know about your wife,” one man answered. “But we know all about you.”

  “We’re told, buddy, that you can identify the Israeli soldiers held on Cape Cod,” the other agent said. “That is correct?”

  Shapiro smiled wearily. “So that’s what this is all about,” he said, remembering his telephone conversation with the district attorney about his client, Howie Mandelbaum.

  “I can’t identify anybody,” Shapiro said. “I told District Attorney McDonough that my client, Mr. Mandelbaum, theoretically he might be able to identify certain persons who were on those ships who were affiliated with the Israel Defense Forces. Theoretically, I said. And that was in return for consideration concerning the criminal charges. That’s what I said. It was all theoretical.” His hands placed quotation marks around the last word.

  The agent to Shapiro’s right pushed him against the wall.

  “Cut the crap, asshole,” the agent shouted. “We aren’t dealing with some state crime shoot-em-up here. This is serious. National security. We aren’t playing little plea bargain games, not now. Is that clear? The DA said you could ID these people. Not your client. Or should I say your former client?” He looked across at the other agent.

  The agent continued, “Mr. Mandelbaum, most unfortunately for all of us, took a flyer in the middle of the night last night. He is no longer with us.”

  “A flyer?” Shapiro said, looking back and forth from one man to the other.

  “Yeah, he played Superman,” the first agent said. “Off the fifth-tier balcony at Charles Street Jail. Either jumped or was tossed, not that it matters much either way. Broke his neck. Tragic. They say he was buck naked.”

  “All that matters is that you are the only one who can ID those Jew soldiers who killed the Coasties. Even more than that, we’re told those soldiers might know something about the atom bomb the Jews smuggled into this country. You care about this country, don’t you, Mr. Shapiro? This is still your country, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, yes, of course this is my country,” Shapiro said quickly, stunned by news of his client’s death. Shapiro remembered his last conversation with Mandelbaum. Maybe he did jump, he thought.

  Sally. Adam. Too much death. His head spun. He sat at the kitchen table.

  The second agent moved behind Shapiro. He grabbed the back of Shapiro’s chair and yanked it away from the table.

  “Enough of this bullshit,” he said. “Get up. You’re coming with us. You’re going to ID those Jew soldiers and you and your buddies are going to tell us everything there is to know about this atom bomb.”

  “Where are we going?” Shapiro asked. He wanted to close his eyes and find these two men gone. “This is all a mistake,” he said quietly. “I have no idea who the Israeli soldiers are. I never said I could pick them out. It was my client. He could do that. And I don’t know anything about any bombs, any atom bombs.”

  The men grabbed his elbows and lifted him to a standing position.

  “Where are you taking me?” Shapiro asked.

  One of the agents grabbed Shapiro by the upper arm. “We’re going for a drive down to the cape. Camp Edwards. Look, buddy, we’re just the delivery guys. All we do is pick you up and drop you off for the experts down there. The experts are the ones who’ll be chatting with you.”

  “Experts?” Shapiro asked.

  “Yeah, the experts, the interrogators. Military interrogators. You heard the president, didn’t you? You’re an enemy combatant, buddy. We turn you over to the military and they make you talk. That’s how it works.”

  “They make everybody talk,” the other agent smirked. “You know, like the car dealer, everybody talks.”

  “And nobody walks,” his partner finished for him with a matching smile.

  “Especially about bombs, like that one that took down the Washington Monument, and the atom bomb, the one you don’t know anything about. You’ll puke your guts out once the military guys work on you.”

  Shapiro was suddenly silent. Atom bomb? He remembered what Sarah Goldberg said about what lay at the deep end of her swimming pool. Oh my God, Shapiro thought. Oh my God. I do know something. They’ll get me to tell them, too. He had no pretensions about what the government would do to him to discover information about a terrorist bomb plot.

  I have to get away, he thought.

  One man still gripped Shapiro’s arm. The other agent stood in the doorway leading to the front hall. Shapiro thought rapidly.

  “Okay. I understand. I’ll be glad to help,” he said. “I don’t know much about anything, but I’ll tell everything I know.”

  “Fine, wonderful, now let’s go,” the man holding his arm said, not relaxing his grip.

  “Look, can I change my clothes first, real quick?” Shapiro asked. “I’ve been wearing this for two days now. Hey, let me get on some clean underwear and socks and I’ll talk my head off.” He smiled. “My bedroom’s upstairs. Just give me thirty seconds.”

  The men looked at one another. The man by the door spoke.

  “All right,” he said. “We’ll check it out first, though.”

  The three men went up the stairs to Shapiro’s bedroom.

  “Any chance of a bit of privacy?” he asked.

  Before answering, the two agents glanced around the room. One man went to the bedroom window, lifted it and looked around outside, seeing that the room was on the second floor and that no trees were within reach. It was a twenty-five-foot drop to the gravel pathway below the window. The other man threw drawers open and searched quickly.

  “Okay, we’ll be right outside the door,” he said to Shapiro, gesturing to his partner. The men walked out the bedroom door, leaving it ajar.

  Shapiro dropped the clean clothes on the floor and quickly stepped to the window, which the agent had left open. Shapiro lifted the hinged lid on the upholstered chest in front of the window and removed a white plastic box with bright-red words: Fire Friend. From inside the box he pulled a length of yellow rope with white plastic steps at intervals. Two shiny steel hooks were attached to the ends of the two parallel lengths of rope. Shapiro shoved the chest away from the wall and snapped the steel hooks onto two steel eyebolts sunk into the wall, near the floor. He threw the yellow rope out the window.

  All this took no more than five seconds. He’d practiced doing just that, years before. Before Adam was born.

  “Thank you, Sally,” he muttered. Thank you for being so afraid of fire, so afraid of being trapped in our second-floor bedroom by a fire on the stairs.

  Shapiro climbed out the window and made his way down the swaying ladder. Just before he reached the ground a head appeared in the window.

  “Shit,” the FBI agent shouted. The head retracted. Shapiro heard a shout through the open window. “Get downstairs. Now. He’s bogeying.”

  Shapiro dropped to the ground, thinking quickly. He glanced at the driveway and saw a black sedan parked directly behind his Mercedes, blocking it from backing out the driveway. He looked around frantically, then spotted the wooden walkway leading to the dock on the salt marsh.

  The full moon showed the flood tide just ebbing, draining the water out to the nearby ocean.

  Shapiro sprinted down the walkway to the end of the dock. Resting upside down in a crooked frame he’d constructed from graying two-by-fours was Shapiro’s red fiberglass kayak, eighteen sleek feet long. A double-bladed paddle was jammed inside the boat.

  Shapiro hefted the forty-five-pound boat off the storage rack and dropped it in the water at the end of the dock. He sat on the edge of the dock and held the boat in place with his right foot. He heard shouts coming from the house.

  “He’s by the fucking water,” a voice shouted. “This way. Hustle!”

  Shapiro lowered himself from the dock into the kayak’s cockpit, holding the long paddle in his left hand while he held onto the dock to steady himself with his right hand. He heard footsteps pounding down the wooden walkway as he shoved of
f from the dock and began paddling furiously away from the house, out into the marsh, toward the ocean a half mile away.

  When fifty feet of water—which Shapiro knew to be only inches deep as the flood tide covered the top of the grass that made up the salt marsh—separated him from the shore, he glanced back and saw the two FBI agents standing on the end of the dock. Both held handguns.

  “Come back here or we’ll shoot, asshole,” one man shouted.

  The other agent shoved the man’s arm aside. “Can’t interrogate a corpse, dummy,” he said. “Get back to the car and get on the radio. Call, I don’t know, the Coast Guard or somebody.”

  There was a marina at the mouth of the river that the marsh fed into. The marina would be closed, but there was a telephone booth there.

  He paddled quickly. One step at a time, he thought, ignoring the breathtaking beauty of gliding over the shallow water with the reflection of the full moon breaking into kaleidoscopic sparkles from the ripples on the surface. Sally had talked about that magic night on the water so many times. He choked. Adam. Adam. Why would they kill you?

  The telephone booth next to the gas pump at the marina was brightly lit. Who do I call, Shapiro wondered. Not my law partners. They wouldn’t let me run from the FBI.

  He reached into his pocket. It was still there, the yellow post-it note on which Judy Katz had written her home telephone number before getting out of Shapiro’s car earlier that night.

  It took three tries before Shapiro managed to punch in the correct set of numbers to charge the call to his credit card. A sleepy voice answered on the sixth ring.

  “Judy, it’s Ben,” he whispered. “I need you to come get me right now. I’ll explain when you get here.”

  He gave her directions to Pavilion Beach, a rocky stretch a half mile from the marina.

  “Judy,” Shapiro said before hanging up, “you’d better bring Sarah with you. I don’t think we’ll be going back to your place—not for a while.”

  CHAPTER 59