“No?”
“Huh-uh. The story, Detective Landsman, is telling us. Just like it has done from the beginning. We’re part of the story. You. Me.”
The book of matches comes from a place in Washington, D.C., called Hogate’s Seafood, at Ninth and Maine Avenue, SW. The very restaurant, if he remembers his history, in front of which Delegate Anthony Dimond, prime opponent of the Alaskan Settlement Act, was run down by a taxicab while chasing an errant rum bun into the street.
Landsman strikes a match.
“Jesus?” he says, looking up cross-eyed over the flame.
“Jesus, too.”
“Jesus is okay with me.”
“I’m glad. He’s okay with me, too. And Jesus wasn’t keen on killing, on hurting people, on destruction. I know that. The Qubbat As-Sakhrah was a fine old piece of architecture, and Islam is a venerable religion, and other than the fact that it’s completely mistaken on a fundamental level, I have no quarrel with it per se. I wish there was some way to do this job that didn’t require taking such actions. But sometimes there isn’t. And Jesus knew that. ‘Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.’ Right? I mean, those are Jesus’ words. The man could be fairly harsh when he needed to be.”
“He was kick-ass,” Landsman suggests.
“Yes, he was. Now, you might not credit the fact, but the end times are coming. And I for one very much look forward to seeing them come. But for that to happen, Jerusalem and the Holy Land have to belong to the Jews again. That’s what it says in the Book. Sadly, there is no way to do that without some bloodshed, unfortunately. Without a certain amount of destruction. That’s just what is written, you know? But I am trying very hard, unlike my immediate predecessor, to hold all that down to the absolute minimum. For Jesus’ sake and for the sake of my own soul and all our sakes. To keep things running clean. Hold this operation together until we have it sorted out over there. Lay us down some facts on the ground.”
“You don’t want anybody to know you’re behind it. You people who do what you do.”
“Well, but, that’s kind of our MO, if you know what I mean.”
“And you want me to keep my mouth shut.”
“I know it’s asking a lot.”
“Just until you lay these facts down on Jerusalem. Move some Arabs out and some Verbovers in. Rename a few streets.”
“Just until we get some of that good old critical mass going. Straighten out some of the noses this has put out of joint. And then get busy, you know. Fulfilling what is written.”
Landsman takes a swallow of mineral water. It’s warm and tastes of the inside of the pocket of a cardigan. “I want my gun and my badge,” he says. “And that’s what I want.”
“I love policemen,” Cashdollar says without much enthusiasm. “I really do.” He covers his mouth with one hand and takes a contemplative breath through his nostrils. His hand sports a manicure, but one thumbnail has been gnawed. “It’s going to get awfully Indian around here, mister. Just between you and me. You get your gun and badge back, you don’t stand to hold on to them for very long. Tribal P won’t be hiring too many Jewboys to serve and protect.”
“Maybe not. But they’ll take Berko.”
“They aren’t taking anyone who doesn’t have the paper.”
“Oh, yeah,” Landsman says. “That’s the other thing I want.”
“You’re talking about a lot of paper, Detective Landsman.”
“You need a lot of quiet.”
“Indeed I do,” Cashdollar says.
Cashdollar studies Landsman for a long second or two, and Landsman understands from a certain alertness in the man’s eyes, a look of anticipation, that there is a gun concealed somewhere on Cashdollar’s person and an itch in his finger to go with it. There are more direct ways of keeping Landsman’s mouth shut than buying him off with a gun and some documentation. Cashdollar gets up from the chair and returns it carefully to its place under the table. He starts to work his thumb into his teeth but thinks better of it.
“If I could just get my Kleenex back?”
Landsman tosses the package, but it goes awry, and Cashdollar fumbles the catch. The package of Kleenex splats down into the box of stale Danish, landing in a shiny patch of red jelly. Anger opens a seam in Cashdollar’s placid gaze, through which you can see the banished shades of monsters and aversions. The last thing he wants, Landsman remembers, is any hint of a mess. Cashdollar tweezes a Kleenex from the package and uses it to wipe the package off, then tucks the rest back into the safety of his right pocket. He fidgets the bottom button of his sweater back through its buttonhole, and in the brief tug of woolen waistband over hip, Landsman spots the bulge of the sholem.
“Your partner,” he tells Landsman, “has a great deal to lose. A very great deal. So does your ex-wife. A fact that they both recognize all too well. Maybe it’s time you came to the same conclusion about yourself.”
Landsman considers the things that remain his to lose: a porkpie hat. A travel chess set and a Polaroid picture of a dead messiah. A boundary map of Sitka, profane, ad hoc, encyclopedic, crime scenes and low dives and chokeberry brambles, printed on the tangles of his brain. Winter fog that blankets the heart, summer afternoons that stretch endless as arguments among Jews. Ghosts of Imperial Russia traced in the onion dome of St. Michael’s Cathedral, and of Warsaw in the rocking and sawing of a cafe violinist. Canals, fishing boats, islands, stray dogs, canneries, dairy restaurants. The neon marquee of the Baranof Theatre reflected on wet asphalt, colors running like watercolor as you come out of a showing of Welles’s Heart of Darkness, which you have just seen for the third time, with the girl of your dreams on your arm.
“Fuck what is written,” Landsman says. “You know what?” All at once he feels weary of ganefs and prophets, guns and sacrifices and the infinite gangster weight of God. He’s tired of hearing about the promised land and the inevitable bloodshed required for its redemption. “I don’t care what is written. I don’t care what supposedly got promised to some sandal-wearing idiot whose claim to fame is that he was ready to cut his own son’s throat for the sake of a hare-brained idea. I don’t care about red heifers and patriarchs and locusts. A bunch of old bones in the sand. My homeland is in my hat. It’s in my ex-wife’s tote bag.”
He sits down. He lights another cigarette.
“Fuck you,” Landsman concludes. “And fuck Jesus, too, he was a pussy.”
“Tick a lock, Landsman,” Cashdollar says softly, miming the twist of a key in the hole of his mouth.
42
When Landsman steps outside the Ickes Building and fits his hat to his voided head, he finds that the world has sailed into a fog bank. The night is a cold sticky stuff that beads up on the sleeves of his overcoat. Korczak Platz is a bowlful of bright mist, smeared here and there with the pawprints of sodium lamps. Half-blind and cold in his bones, he trudges along Monastir Street to Berlevi Street, then over to Max Nordau Street, with a kink in his back and an ache in his head and a sharp throbbing pain in his dignity. The space recently occupied by his mind hisses like the fog in his ears, hums like a bank of fluorescent tubes. He feels that he suffers from tinnitus of the soul.
When he drags himself into the lobby of the Zamenhof, Tenenboym hands him two letters. One is from the board, informing him that the hearing into his conduct in the deaths of Zilberblat and Flederman has been scheduled for nine A.M. tomorrow morning. The other letter is a communication from the hotel’s new ownership. A Ms. Robin Navin of the Joyce/Generali Hotel Group has written to inform Landsman that exciting changes are afoot in the coming months for the Zamenhof, to be known as of January 1 as the Luxington Parc Sitka. Part of the general excitement stems from the fact that Landsman’s monthly lease has been terminated, effective on December 1. All the pigeonholes behind the front desk contain long white envelopes, each one slotted with the same fatal bend sinister in twenty-pound laid. Except for the pigeonhole labeled 208. Nothing in that one.
“You heard about what happened?” Tenenboym says after Landsman has returned from his epistolary journey
