wives dropped dimes on them. He knows who’s keeping the head of Furry Markov in his garage, and which narcotics inspector is on the payroll of Anatoly Moskowits the Wild Beast. Only nobody knows that he knows but Meyer Landsman.
“A donut, Reb Taganes,” Landsman says when he comes stomping in from the alley, shivering the crust of snow from his overshoes. The Sitka Saturday afternoon lies dead as a failed messiah in its winding rag of snow. There was nobody on the sidewalk, hardly a car in the street. But here inside Mabuhay Donuts, three or four floaters, solitaries, and drunks between benders lean against the sparkly resin counter, sucking the tea from their shtekelehs and working the calculations of their next big mistakes.
“Only one?” Benito says. He is a squat, thick man with skin the color of the milky tea he serves, his cheeks pitted like a pair of dark moons. Though his hair is black, he’s past seventy. As a young man he was the flyweight champion of Luzon, and with his thick fingers and the tattooed salamis of his forearms he gets taken for a tough customer, which serves the needs of his business. His big caramel eyes betray him, so he keeps them hooded and downcast. But Landsman has looked into them. To run a shtinker, you have to see the broken heart inside the deadest pan. “Look like you should to eat a couple, maybe three, Detective.”
Benito elbows aside the nephew or cousin he’s got working the fry basket, and snake-charms a rope of raw dough into the fat. A few minutes later, Landsman is holding a tight paper packet of heaven in his hand.
“I have that information you wanted on Olivia’s sister’s daughter,” Landsman says around a warm sugary mouthful.
Benito draws a cup of tea for Landsman and then nods toward the alley. He pulls on his anorak and they go out. Benito takes a ring of keys from his belt loop and works open an iron door two doors down from Mabuhay Donuts. This is where Benito keeps his lover, Olivia, in three small, tidy rooms with a Warhol portrait of Dietrich and a bitter smell of vitamins and rotten gardenia. Olivia’s not there. The lady has been in and out of the hospital lately, dying in chapters, with a cliff-hanger at the end of every one. Benito waves Landsman into a red leather armchair piped in white. Of course, Landsman has no information for Benito about any of Olivia’s sisters’ daughters. Olivia is not really a lady, either, but Landsman is also the only one who knows that about Benito Taganes the donut king. Years ago, a serial rapist named Kohn forced himself on Miss Olivia Lagdameo and found out her secret. Kohn’s second big surprise that night was the chance appearance of Patrolman Landsman. What Landsman did to Kohn’s face left the momzer talking with a slur for the rest of his life. So it’s a mixture of gratitude and shame, and not money, that drives the flow of information from Benito to the man who saved Olivia.
“Ever hear anything about the son of Heskel Shpilman?” Landsman says, setting down the donuts and the cup of tea. “Kid named Mendel?”
Benito stands, hands clasped behind his back, like a boy called on to recite a poem at school. “Over the years,” he says. “A thing or two. Junkie, no?”
Landsman arcs one fuzzy eyebrow a quarter of an inch. You don’t answer a shtinker’s questions, especially not the rhetorical ones.
“Mendel Shpilman,” Benito decides. “Seen him around maybe a few time. Funny guy. Talk a little Tagalog. Sing a little Filipino song. What happen, he not dead?”
Still Landsman doesn’t say anything, but he likes Benny Taganes, and running him always feels a little rude. To cover the silence, he picks up the shtekeleh and takes a bite. It’s still warm, and there’s a hint of vanilla, and the crust crunches between his teeth like a caramel glaze on a pot of custard. As it goes into Landsman’s mouth, Benito watches with the appraising coldness of an orchestra conductor auditioning a flutist.
“That’s good, Benny.”
“Don’t insult me, Detective, I beg you.”
“Sorry.”
“I know it’s good.”
“The best.”
“Nothing in your life even comes close.”
This is so easily true that the sentiment brings a sting of tears to Landsman’s eyes, and to cover that, he eats another donut.
“Somebody was looking for the yid,” Benito says in his rough and fluent Yiddish. “Two, three months back. A couple somebodies.”
“You saw them?”
Benito shrugs. His tactics and operations he keeps a mystery from Landsman, the cousins and nephews and the network of subshtinkers he employs.
“Somebody saw them,” he says. “It might have been me.”
“Were they black hats?”
Benito considers the question for a long moment, and Landsman can see it troubles him in a way that’s somehow scientific, almost pleasurable. He gives his head a slow, certain shake. “No black hats,” he says. “But beards.”
“Beards? You mean, what, they were religious types?”
“Little yarmulkes. Neat beards. Young men.”
“Russians? Accents?”
“If I heard about these young men, then the one who told me didn’t say nothing about accents. If I saw them myself, then I’m sorry, I don’t remember. Hey, what’s the matter, what for you don’t write this down, Detective?”
Early on in their collaboration, Landsman made a show of taking Benito’s information very seriously. Now he fishes out his notebook and scratches a line or two, just to keep the donut king happy. He’s not sure what to make of them, these two or three neat young Jews, religious but not black hat.
“And they were asking what, exactly, please?” he says.
“Whereabouts. Information.”
“Did they get it?”
“Not at Mabuhay Donuts. Not from a Taganes.”
Benito’s Shoyfer rings, and he snaps it open and lays it against his ear. All the hardness goes out of the lines around his mouth. His face matches his eyes now, soft, brimming with feeling. He rattles on tenderly in Tagalog. Landsman catches the lowing sound of his own last name.
“How’s Olivia?” Landsman asks as Benito closes his phone and ladles a yard of cold plaster into the mold of his face.
“She can’t eat,” Benito says. “No more shtekelehs.”
“That’s a shame.”
They’re through. Landsman gets up, slips the notebook back into his hip pocket, and feeds himself the last bite. He feels stronger and happier than he has in weeks or perhaps months. There is something in the death of Mendel Shpilman, a story to grab hold of, and it’s shaking the dust and spiders off him. Or else it’s the donut. They head for the door, but Benito puts a hand on Landsman’s arm.
“Why you don’t ask me anything else, Detective?”
“What would you like me to ask you?” Landsman frowns, then lights doubtfully on a question. “You heard something today, maybe? Something out of Verbov Island?” It’s hard to imagine but not inconceivable that word of Verbover displeasure over Landsman’s visit to the rebbe already would have reached Benito’s ears.
“Verbov Island? No, another thing. You still looking for the Zilberblat?”
Viktor Zilberblat is one of the eleven outstanding cases that Landsman and Berko are supposed to be resolving effectively. Zilberblat was stabbed to death last March outside of the Hofbrau tavern in the Nachtasyl, the old German quarter, a few blocks from here. The knife was small and dull, and the murder had an unstudied air.
“Somebody see the brother,” Benito Taganes says. “Rafi. Sneaking around.”
Nobody was sorry to see Viktor go, least of all his brother, Rafael. Viktor had abused Rafael, cheated him, humiliated him, and made free with his cash and his woman. After Viktor died, Rafael left town, whereabouts unknown. The evidence linking Rafael to the knife is inconclusive at best. Two semireliable witnesses put him forty miles away from the Nachtasyl for two hours on either side of the likely time of his brother’s murder. But Rafi Zilberblat has a long and monotonous police record, and he will do very nicely, Landsman reflects, given the lowered standard of proof that the new policy implies.
