‘The side of light,’ he said.
‘Lightish,’ I corrected him. ‘I’ll talk to Marielle, and to Ernie Scollay, just in case his brother might have let something slip over the years. You’ll keep your people away from them, though.’
‘Only Liat will know their names.’
‘And Liat doesn’t tell, right?’
‘No, Mr Parker, Liat doesn’t tell. She is very good at keeping secrets.’
He glanced at Louis and Walter. There was more than he wanted to say about this.
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘Whatever you have to say, you can say in front of them.’
‘She spoke to me only of your wounds,’ he said. ‘Nothing more. And I did not ask her to sleep with you, in case you were wondering. She did that for her own reasons.’
‘I
‘I didn’t know he got laid,’ said Walter. ‘Nobody tells me anything.’
‘Shut up, both of you,’ I said.
‘You might also be interested to know that she believed in you from the start,’ said Epstein. ‘It was I who had doubts, not her. She had none, but she indulged an old man’s fears. She said that she knew from the moment she took you inside herself.’
‘God
‘I told you to shut up.’
‘So,’ said Epstein. He stood, and buttoned his jacket. ‘We move forward. You’ll talk to the woman today?’
‘Tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I’d prefer to speak to her in person, her and Scollay. Along the way, though, I may stop off to meet with a lawyer in Lynn.’
‘Eldritch,’ said Epstein. He didn’t look pleased to be speaking that name.
‘I’ll be careful what I tell him.’
‘I suspect that whatever we know, he already knows more: he and his client.’
‘My enemy’s enemy –’ I said.
– ‘may be my enemy too,’ Epstein concluded. ‘We don’t share their aims.’
‘Sometimes I think we do. We may even share some of their methods.’
Epstein chose not to argue further, and he and I shook hands.
‘We have a car waiting for you outside,’ I said. ‘Louis will escort you back to Brooklyn.’
‘And my young friends?’
‘They’ll be fine,’ I assured him. ‘Well, mostly fine.’
I planned to fly up to Boston a couple of hours later. Louis and Angel would drive up in a day or two, along with their toys. In the meantime, I went back over what Marielle Vetters had told me, because there was one detail of her tale that stood out, and only because it conflicted with another story I had heard many years before. It might have been nothing, a piece of misremembering on my part or on the part of the man who had shared the tale with me, but if Marielle Vetters genuinely did not know anything more about the location of the plane it was possible that I could find another means of narrowing down the search area.
It would just mean talking to a man about a ghost.
25
Adiv and Yonathan trudged south through the wilds of the Jersey Pine Barrens. They had been driven for what seemed like hours over rough terrain before eventually being dumped in the woods. The man named Angel had suggested to them the direction in which they should walk if they wanted to get to Winslow or Hammonton, but they had not been sure whether to trust him and, to tell the truth, Angel had seemed a little vague about the directions to begin with.
‘I don’t like nature,’ he told them, as they stood under his gun, birds calling above their heads. ‘Too many trees. And garter snakes, and bobcats, and bears.’
‘Bears?’ asked Adiv.
‘
‘Why?’
‘Because they’re more scared of you than you are of them.’
‘Really?’ said Yonathan.
‘Really,’ confirmed Angel. He thought for a second. ‘Or maybe that’s spiders. Well, happy trails.’
The doors closed, and Adiv and Yonathan were abandoned in a spray of dirt and mud and twigs. Now it was growing darker, but at least they had found a road, even if there were no vehicles upon it and they could not yet see any signs of artificial light.
‘I thought they were going to kill us,’ said Adiv.
‘Perhaps you’ll be more polite in future,’ said Yonathan.
‘Perhaps,’ admitted Adiv. ‘And perhaps you won’t go pointing guns at the wrong people.’
They walked on. All was quiet.
‘We’re bound to find a store or a gas station soon,’ said Adiv.
Yonathan wasn’t so sure. It seemed like they’d driven far into the wilderness, and it had taken them a while simply to find something that was more than a trail. He just wanted to be out of the woods before night fell in earnest. He hoped that the rabbi was okay. It was one thing to be personally and professionally embarrassed as they had been, but if anything were to happen to the rabbi . . .
‘At least they left us with some quarters for the phone,’ he said.
Adiv checked his pocket, and came out with the four coins. He clutched them tightly in his fist, kissed the back of his hand, then opened it again. He stopped and examined them more closely, squinting in the poor light.
‘What is it?’ said Yonathan.
‘Sonofabitch,’ said Adiv quietly.
He dropped the coins into Yonathan’s hand before switching loudly to Hebrew. ‘
Yonathan pushed the coins around with the tip of a finger.
‘Canadian quarters,’ he said. ‘The bastard.’
26
Davis Tate couldn’t get the smell of nicotine out of his mouth and nostrils. He felt as though he were coated in filth outside and in, even though by then the man in the corner was long gone from the bar. They hadn’t even seen him depart, and only the newspaper and the brandy – largely untouched – confirmed that he had ever been there at all. His presence had made Tate profoundly uneasy. He couldn’t have said why exactly, apart from that momentary pause in the tapping of the man’s fingers when Tate joked about his mortality, but he was certain that he and Becky had been the focus of the stranger’s attention. Tate had even gone so far as to corral their server while she was removing the empty brandy snifter from the booth and wiping the table clean with a cloth that stank of bleach. He could see Becky watching him, puzzled and unamused, but he didn’t care.
‘That guy,’ Tate said to the waitress, ‘the one who was sitting at this table: you ever see him in here before?’
The waitress shrugged. If she were any more bored, she’d have been horizontal.
‘I don’t remember,’ she said. ‘We’re midtown. Half the people who come in here I never see again.’
‘Did he pay cash or credit?’
‘What are you, a cop?’
