Operation Shylock

subtracting one number from another is called the difference. The symbol for this operation is our friend the minus sign. Any of this ring a bell? As in addition, only like qualities can be subtracted. Dollars from dollars, for instance, work very nicely. Dollars from dollars, Phil, is what subtraction was made for.”

What was he? Was he fifty-one percent smart or was he fifty-one percent stupid? Was he fifty-one percent crazy or was he fifty-one percent sane? Was he fifty-one percent reckless or was he fifty- one percent cunning? In every case it was a very close call.

“Miss Duchin. I must confess,” I said, “I’d forgotten Miss Duchin.”

“You played Columbus for Hana Duchin in the Columbus Day play. Fourth grade. She adored you. Best Columbus she ever had. They all adored you. Your mother, your Aunt Mim, your Aunt Honey, your Grandma Finkel — when you were a tot they used to stand around the crib, and when your mother changed your diaper, they used to take turns kissing your tuchas. Women have been lining up to kiss your tuchas ever since.”

Well, we were both laughing now. “What are you, Pipik? What’s your game? You have this amusing side to you, don’t you? You’re obviously much more than just a fool, you have a stunning companion who is full of life, you don’t lack for audacity or daring, you even have some brains. I hate to be the one to say it but the vehemence and intelligence of your criticism of Israel makes you into something more than just a crackpot. Is this just a malicious comedy about convictions? The argument for Diasporism isn’t always as farcical as you make it sound. There’s a mad plausibility about it. There’s more than a grain of truth in recognizing and acknowledging the Euro-centrism of Judaism, of the Judaism that gave birth to Zionism, and so forth. Yet it also strikes me, I’m afraid, like the voice of puerile wishful thinking. Tell me, please, what is this really all about? Identity theft? It’s the stupidest con going. You’ve got to get caught. Who are you? Tell me what you do for a living when you aren’t doing this. As far as I know — though correct me if I’m wrong — you’ve never plugged into my American Express card. So on what do you survive? Your wits alone?”

“Guess.” Oh, he was very bright and sparkly now, practically flirtatious. Guess. Don’t tell me he’s bisexual! Don’t tell me this is more of the guy in the hallway! Don’t tell me he wants us to have it off together, Philip Roth fucking Philip Roth! That, I’m afraid, is a form of masturbation too fancy even for me.

“I can’t guess. You’re a blank to me,” I said. “I even get the feeling that without me around you’re a blank to yourself. A little urbane, a little intelligent, a little self-confident, maybe even a little fascinating — Jinx-like creatures don’t just drop from the sky — but mostly somebody who never arrived at a clear idea of what his life was for, mostly uncohesive, disappointed, a very shadowy, formless, fragmented thing. A kind of wildly delineated nothing. What enkindles you when I’m not here? Under ‘me’ isn’t there at least a little you? What do you aim for in life other than getting people to think that you are somebody else?”

“What do you aim for other than that?”

“Yes, I take your point, but the question asked of you has a broader meaning, no? Pipik, what do you do for a real life?”

“I’m a licensed law-enforcement official,” he said. “How’s that grab you? I’m a private investigator. Here.”

His ID. Could have been a bad picture of me. License No. 7794. Date of Expiration 06/01/90. “… A duly licensed private investigator … and is vested with all the authorities allowed him by law.” And his signature. My signature.

“I run an agency in Chicago,” he said. “Three guys and me. That’s all. Small agency. We list what most everybody else lists — thefts, white-and blue-collar crime, missing persons, matrimonial surveillance. We do lie detection. Narcotics. We do murders. I do all the missing-persons cases. Missing persons is what Philip Roth is known for throughout the Midwest. I’ve been as far as Mexico and Alaska. Twenty-one years and I found everybody I was ever contracted to find. I also handle all the murders.”

I gave back the ID card and watched him return it to his wallet. Were there a hundred more phony cards in there, all of them bearing that name? I didn’t think it wise to ask just then — he’d caught me up short with “I handle all the murders.”

“You like the dangerous assignments,” I said.

“I have to be challenged twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I like to live on the edge, always up — it keeps my adrenaline going. Anything other than that I consider boring.”

“Well, I’m stunned.”

“I see that.”

“I had you figured for an adrenaline freak but it wasn’t exactly a law enforcer that I would have thought to call you.”

“It’s impossible for a Jew to be a private detective?”

“No.”

“It’s impossible for a detective to look like me? Or like you?”

“No, it’s not even that.”

“You just think I’m a liar. It’s a cozy universe you’ve got going — you’re the truth-telling Philip and I’m the lying Philip, you’re the honest Philip and I’m the dishonest Philip, you’re the reasonable Philip and I’m the manic psychopath.”

“I like the missing-persons bit. I like that that’s your specialty. Very witty in the circumstances. And what got you into detective work? Tell me that, while we’re at it.”

“I was always the type of person who wanted to help other people. Since I was a kid I couldn’t stand injustice. It drove me crazy. It still does. It always will. Injustice is my obsession. I think it has to do with being a Jewish kid growing up in the war era. America wasn’t always fair to Jews in those days. Beaten up in high school. Just like Jonathan Pollard. I could even have gone in the same direction as Pollard. Acting out of my love of Jews, I could have done it. I had the Pollard fantasies, volunteering for Israel, working for the Mossad. At home, FBI, CIA, they both turned me down. Never found out why. I sometimes wonder if it wasn’t because of you, because they thought it was just too much bother, a guy who was a veritable duplicate of somebody in the public eye. But I’ll never know. I used to draw a cartoon strip for myself when I was a kid. ‘A Jew in the FBI.’ Pollard is very important to me. What the Dreyfus case was to Herzl, the Pollard case is to me. Through my PI contacts I’ve heard that the FBI attached Pollard to a polygraph machine, gave him lists of prominent American Jews, and told him to identify the other spies. He wouldn’t do it. Everything about the guy repels me except that. I live in dread of a second Pollard. I live in dread of what that will mean.”

“So, is what I’m supposed to gather from all this that you became a detective to help Jews?”

“Look, you tell me you know nothing about me and you’re at a disadvantage because I know so much about you. I’m explaining to you that it’s my profession to know as much as I know, not just about you but about everyone. You ask me to level with you. That’s what I’m trying to do. Except all I meet with is a barrage of disbelief. You want me to take a polygraph? I could pass it with flying colors. Okay, I haven’t been calm and collected with you. It surprises me, too. I wrote and apologized for that. Some people blitz you, no matter who you are. I have to tell you that you are only the second person in my life to blitz me like this. In my line of work I’m hardened to everything and I see everything and I have to learn to handle everything. The only other time it happened before, that I was blitzed anything like this, was in 1963, when I met the president. He came to Chicago. I was doing some bodyguard work then. Usually I was employed by a private contractor, but at this time I was employed by the public sector, too. It was the mayor’s office. I couldn’t speak when he shook my hand. The words wouldn’t come out. That doesn’t usually happen. Words are a large part of my business and account for ninety percent of my success. Words and brains. It was probably because I was having masturbatory fantasies in those days about his wife on her water skis and I felt guilty. Do you know what the president said to me? He said, ‘I know your friend Styron. You’ve got to come down to Washington and have dinner with us and the Styrons some night.’ Then he said, ‘I’m a great admirer of Letting Go.’ That was in August 1963. Three months later he was shot.”

“Kennedy mixed you up with me. The president of the United States thought a bodyguard in the mayor’s office was a novelist on the side.”

“The guy shook a million hands a day. He took me for another dignitary. It wasn’t hard — there was my name, my looks, and besides, people are always taking a bodyguard for somebody else. That’s part of the job. Somebody desires protection. Somebody like you, say, who might be feeling threatened. You ride around with them. You pretend you’re a friend or something. Sure, some guys tell you they want to make it obvious that you’re a