Landsman is lying on Berko and Ester-Malke’s bed, on his side, facing the wall with its dyed linen scene of Balinese gardens and savage birds. Someone has undressed him, leaving him in his underpants. He sits up. The skin at the back of his head prickles, and then a cord of pain goes taut. Landsman pats the site of his injury. A bandage meets his fingers, a crinkly oblong of gauze and tape. Surrounding it, a queer hairless patch of scalp. Memories fall on top of one another with a slapping sound like crime-scene photographs fresh from Dr. Shpringer’s death camera. A jocular emergency room tech, an X ray, an injection of morphine, a looming swab dipped in Betadine. Before that, the light from a streetlamp striping the white vinyl ceiling of an ambulance. And before that. Before the ride in the ambulance. Purple slush. Steam from the spilled contents of a human gut. A hornet at his ear. A red jet bursting from the forehead of Rafi Zilberblat. A cipher of holes in a blank expanse of plaster. Landsman backs away from the memory of what happened in the Big Macher parking lot, so quickly that he bumps right into the pang of losing Django Landsman in his dream.
“Woe is me,” Landsman says. He wipes his eyes. He would give up a gland, a minor organ, for a papiros.
The bedroom door opens, and Berko comes in, carrying an almost-full pack of Broadways.
“Have I ever told you that I love you?” Landsman says, knowing full well that he never has.
“You never have, thank God,” Berko says. “I got these from the neighbor, the Fried woman. I told her it was a police seizure.”
“I am insanely grateful.”
“I note the adverb.”
Berko notes also that Landsman has been crying; one eyebrow shoots up, hangs suspended, drifts down like a tablecloth settling onto a table.
“Baby okay?” Landsman says.
“Teeth.” Berko takes a coat hanger from a hook on the back of the bedroom door. On the hanger are Landsman’s clothes, neat and brushed. Berko feels around in the hip pocket of Landsman’s blazer and produces a matchbook. Then he comes and stands by the bed and holds out the papiroses and matches.
“I can’t honestly claim,” says Landsman, “that I know what I’m doing here.”
“It was Ester-Malke’s idea. Knowing how you feel about hospitals. They said you didn’t need to stay.”
“Have a seat.”
There is no chair in the room. Landsman slides over, and Berko sits down on the edge of the bed, causing alarm among the bedsprings.
“It’s really okay if I smoke?”
“Not really, no. Go stand by the window.”
Landsman tips himself out of the bed. When he rolls up the bamboo shade on the window, he is surprised to see that it’s pouring rain. The smell of rain blows in through the two inches the window has been cranked open, explaining the fragrance of Bina’s hair in his dream. Landsman looks down to the parking lot of the apartment building and observes that the snow has melted and been washed away. The light feels all wrong, too.
“What time is it?”
“Four-thirty… two,” Berko says without checking his watch.
“What day is it?”
“Sunday.”
Landsman cranks open the window all the way and hooks his left buttock over the sill. Rain falls on his aching head. He lights his papiros and takes a long drag and tries to decide if he’s disturbed by this information. “Long time since I did that,” he says. “Slept through a whole day.”
“You must have needed it,” Berko observes blandly. A sideways look in Landsman’s direction. “Ester-Malke’s the one who took your pants off, by the way. Just so you know.”
Landsman flicks ash out of the window. “I was shot.”
“Grazed. They said it’s more like a kind of burn. They didn’t need to stitch it.”
“There were three of them. Rafael Zilberblat. A pisher I made for his brother. And some chicken. The brother took my car, my wallet. My badge and my sholem. Left me there.”
“So it was reconstructed.”
“I wanted to call for help, but the little ratface Jew took my Shoyfer, too.”
The mention of Landsman’s phone makes Berko smile.
“What?” Landsman says.
“So, your pisher’s tooling along. North on the Ickes, headed for Yakovy, Fairbanks, Irkutsk.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Your phone rings. Your pisher answers it.”
“And it’s you?”
“Bina.”
“I like it.”
“Two minutes on the phone with the Zilberblat, she has his whereabouts, his description, the name of his dog when he was eleven. A couple of latkes pick him up five minutes later outside Krestov. Your car is fine. Your wallet still had cash in it.”
Landsman affects to take an interest in the way that fire turns cured tobacco to flakes of ash. “And my badge and gun?” he says.
“Ah.”
“Ah.”
“Your badge and your gun are now in the hands of your commanding officer.”
“Does she intend to return them?”
Berko reaches over and smooths the indentation that Landsman left in the surface of his bed.
“It was strictly line of duty,” Landsman says, his tone sounding whiny even to his own ear. “I got a tip on Rafi Zilberblat.” He shrugs and runs his fingers along the bandage at the back of his head. “I just wanted to talk to the yid.”
“You should have called me first.”
“I didn’t want to bother you on a Saturday.”
It’s no excuse, and it comes out even lamer than Landsman hoped.
“Nu, I’m an idiot,” Landsman admits. “And a bad policeman, too.”
“Rule number one.”
“I know. I just felt like doing something right then. I didn’t think it was going to go the way that it went.”
“In any case,” Berko says. “The pisher. The little brother. Calls himself Willy Zilberblat. He confessed on his late brother’s behalf. Says indeed Rafi killed Viktor. With half a pair of scissors.”
“How about that.”
“All other things being equal, I would say Bina has reason to be happy with you on that one. You resolved it very effectively.”
“ Half a pair of scissors.”
“How’s that for resourceful?”
“Frugal, even.”
“And the chicken you handled so roughly-that was you, too?”
“It was me.”
“Nicely done, Meyer.” There is no sarcasm in Berko’s tone or face. “You put a pill in Yacheved Flederman.”
“I did not.”
“You had yourself quite a day.”
“The nurse?”
“Our colleagues on the B Squad are delighted with you.”
“That killed that old geezer, what’s his name, Herman Pozner?”
“It was their only open case from last year. They thought she was in Mexico.”
“Fuck me,” Landsman says in American.
“Tabatchnik and Karpas already put in a good word for you with Bina, as I understand.”
