mentioned?”
“Bye, Dick.”
“Don’t you want to get back at them for releasing the jail story? They’re dragging your name through the muck!”
“First greed, now incitement. What’s next? Seduction?”
“If I thought I had a chance.”
“Not if you talk to Linder again.” She looked through the wall of glass at the patio, her mattress on the concrete floor. Tonight, after shelving her books and cleaning the house, she would sleep in her own bedroom. “And thanks for the brownies.”
“What brownies?”
“Chocolate, with the
“Hold on.”
A moment later he came back. “I wish I could take credit for it, but we don’t know anything about brownies.”
“Oh, God!” She hung up and called the rabbi’s house.
The phone rang once, twice, three times.
A machine picked up, prompting her to leave a message.
“It’s Masada. Don’t eat those brownies!”
She tried Rabbi Josh’s mobile. No answer. She grabbed the keys to the Corvette and ran.
Professor Silver watched Elizabeth’s Toyota enter McDonald’s parking lot. She emerged from the car legs first, breasts second, then the rest. She was plump in a pleasing, feminine manner that reminded him of the women in Nablus and Amman. He felt kinship toward her. Like him, she had tucked away her Palestinian identity and put on an effective facade to achieve her goals.
But he could not afford to be soft with her. A flurry of e-mails during the previous night, including electronic copies of Dr. Pablo’s test results, had produced a lifeline: Hadassah Hospital accepted him into the experimental treatment, provided he was approved by the Ministry of the Interior as an
Elizabeth picked up her usual order, collected napkins and a straw, and turned to leave.
“Hi there!”
Her face lost some color, but she came over and sat across from him.
“Here, my papers.” He produced a brown envelope. “The application form, my birth certificate-”
“I’m not your immigration lawyer.” Elizabeth sipped from her drink and stood up. “Take your chances like everybody else.”
“My tourist visa is long expired.” He remained sitting, counting on her good manners not to leave an old man in midsentence. “I have no chance without your help, Elzirah.”
“My name is Elizabeth McPherson!”
“A new name doesn’t change the person.” His eye stung, reminding him how essential it was to obtain this woman’s assistance. He blinked to moisten the eye, trying to ignore the blotch in the middle of his vision.
She leaned over the table. “I’m not going to jeopardize my career for you or for my estranged father. Now leave me alone, or you’ll need a criminal lawyer too!”
“Please,” he forced himself to smile, “sit down for a minute.”
“I must wart you that under the law-”
“The law? What does the law say about a superior who sleeps with her married deputy every Wednesday night?”
Finally her arrogance collapsed, and redness descended on her face.
“Hire a lawyer?” He rattled the envelope. “Take your chances?”
She sat down. “Extortion is a crime.”
“Elzirah,” he said softly, “I offer you redemption, a chance to serve the Palestinian people.”
She took the envelope. “I can’t promise anything.”
Silver followed her outside. “I must travel abroad legally so I can return here without a problem and continue my work.”
Elizabeth unlocked her car. “These applications take months.”
He looked up at the full moon in the clear Arizona sky. The blotch created an eclipse. He closed his eyes, imagining he was already blind. “You have one week.”
She started the car. “There’s no way.”
“One week, or we both lose everything!”
At the rabbi’s house, Masada knocked on the door, expecting Shanty to greet her with barking. But there was only silence on the other side. She tried the handle. The door opened.
The tray of brownies was on the kitchen floor, empty, surrounded by crumbs, which she collected and wrapped in a paper towel. She tried his mobile again, and heard it ring in the other room, where he must have forgotten it. On the counter she found a veterinarian business card, called the number, and asked if Rabbi Josh Frank was there by any chance.
He got on the phone and told Masada that Shanty was sick.
When she arrived, Rabbi Josh was pacing the hallway while Raul played video games in the waiting room. Masada handed the crumbs to the nurse and explained her suspicion that it was laced with something.
They sat on a plastic bench. The walls were painted to look like blue water crested by foamy waves, seagulls diving toward a sailboat, beach toys scattered near a sand castle. Masada held his hand, but he pulled it away.
“Linda was on blood thinners for years,” he said, “but they stopped it a month before she was due to deliver. I should have known better.”
“What happened?”
“Normal delivery, no problems, but she kept bleeding. She nursed him once, and was gone.” He clicked a middle finger and a thumb. “Just like that. And I still don’t understand why God took her. I cannot reconcile myself to His decision!”
An hour later the vet appeared. “Your dog was poisoned.” He showed them a computer printout with a molecular diagram. “It’s a compound used to open sewage blockage. One piece of brownie would have given Shanty the worst diarrhea, but a whole tray was a shock to the system. We’ll keep her overnight, hydrate her as much as we can, and see how it goes.”
The vet left, and Rabbi Josh said, “Raul could have eaten those brownies.”
“It’s the Israelis,” she said.
“Then maybe you should drop it!”
Masada was quiet for a moment. “My readers deserve the truth.”
“Why? Would you tell a man standing at a cliff’s edge that his tests show a malignant tumor? Or that his wife has just filed for divorce? Would you yell
“My job is to report the facts.”
“The facts about yet another corrupt senator? And what about the facts showing Israel’s vulnerability? The facts about millions of hostile Muslims seething to destroy Israel? The facts about Syria’s chemical weapons, enough to kill every living thing in Israel? The facts about Iran’s nuclear capability, a deadly menace to millions of Jews and Arabs?”
“My story was about a senator selling legislation.”
“Isn’t Israel’s need for a mutual defense arrangement with America irrelevant to this story?”
