The Wrath of Angels

16

So: could I have walked away from Marielle Vetters’ tale, leaving the plane in the Great North Woods to sink finally into the ground, dragged down, if the testimony of the late Harlan Vetters and Paul Scollay was to be believed, by some intent on the part of nature itself? Possibly, but I knew that it would have come back to haunt me in the end: not simply the nagging knowledge that the plane was out there, nor my curiosity about the nature of the partial list of names that Vetters had taken from the wreckage, but because of Brightwell’s involvement in the search. It meant that the plane was part of the pattern of my life, and perhaps within it might lie some inkling of the greater game that was being played, one in which I was more than a pawn but less than a king.

Angel and Louis, too, had elected to become involved, for Brightwell had killed Louis’s cousin, and anything that concerned the Believers and their legacy was of interest to Louis. His capacity for vengeance was limitless.

But there was one other who had been intimately involved in the matter of Brightwell and the Believers, one who knew more than anyone else about bodies that decayed but did not die, and migrating spirits, more perhaps than he had even admitted to me. His name was Epstein, and he was a rabbi, and a grieving father, and a hunter of fallen angels.

I called New York, and made arrangements to meet him the following evening.

The kosher diner lay on Stanton, and was situated between a deli that was popular with flies, judging by the number of black corpses in the window, and a tailor who had clearly never met a piece of polyester that he didn’t like. Epstein was already at the restaurant by the time I arrived: the sight of one of his goons on the door gave his presence away. This one wasn’t wearing a yarmulke, but he fitted the type: young, dark-haired, Jewish, and built from bricks and protein. He would be armed too, which probably explained why his right hand was buried deep in the pocket of his navy coat while his left was not. Epstein didn’t carry a gun, but the people who surrounded him and ensured his safety most certainly did. The kid didn’t seem surprised to see me approach, but that was probably because I’d passed one of his buddies two blocks earlier, and he’d kept watch on me to make sure nobody was following. Angel, in turn, was a block behind him while Louis shadowed him from across the street. In this way, Epstein and I provided gainful employment for at least four people, and thus ensured that the wheels of capitalism kept turning.

The restaurant was as I remembered it from my last visit: a long wooden serving counter to the right, beneath which was a series of glass cases which would usually have contained overstuffed sandwiches and some carefully created specialties – beef tongue polonaise in raisin gravy, stuffed cabbage leaves, chicken livers sautéed in white wine – but were now empty, and a handful of small, round tables along the left wall, on one of which a trio of candles flickered in an ornate silver sconce. There Rabbi Epstein sat, similarly unchanged. He had always struck me as a man who had probably been old before his time, and so his later years had simply accrued without altering him unduly. Only the death of his son might have added to his white hairs and the fine wrinkles on his face, the young man put to death by those who shared something of the beliefs of Brightwell and his kind, if not their nature.

Epstein rose to shake my hand. He was elegantly dressed in a lightweight black silk suit, and a white shirt with a carefully knotted black silk tie. It was another unseasonably warm evening, but the A/C in the restaurant was off. Had I been wearing something similar to Epstein’s suit in this heat I’d have been leaving puddles on chairs, but Epstein’s hand was dry to the touch, and there was not even a hint of moisture on his face. By contrast, my shirt was stuck to my back beneath my blue wool sport coat.

From the back of the restaurant a woman appeared, dark-haired, brown-eyed, and silent: the deaf mute who had been present on the first occasion that Epstein and I had met here years before. She placed a glass of ice water in front of each of us, and some sprigs of mint. Her eyes turned to me as she did so, and she looked at me with something like interest. I watched her walk away. She was wearing oversized black jeans belted at her slim waist, and a black camisole top. Her hair hung in a single braid down her tanned back, tied with a length of red ribbon at the end. As when last we met, she smelled of cloves and cinnamon.

If Epstein saw the direction of my gaze, he did not acknowledge it. He fussed with the mint, crumbling it into his water, then stirred it with a spoon. There was silverware on the table. Soon food would start to arrive. It was how Epstein preferred to conduct his business.

Epstein seemed distracted, almost as though he were in some discomfort.

‘Are you okay?’

Epstein waved a hand in dismissal. ‘An unfortunate incident on my way here, nothing more. I was paying a visit to the Stanton Street Shul, and a man not much younger than I called me a “mockey bastard” as I passed him. It’s been many years since I heard that term used. It troubled me: the age of the man who said it, the obsolescence of the insult. It was like stepping back to another time.’

He recovered himself, stretching as though the memory of the insult was a physical thing that he could force from his body.

‘Still, ignorance has no sell-by date. It’s been a while, Mr Parker. It seems that you’ve been busy since last we met. I continue to follow your entertaining career with much interest.’

I had a suspicion that whatever Epstein knew about me, he hadn’t gleaned from the newspapers. Epstein had his own sources, including the senior FBI agent named Ross at the New York field office, a man whose responsibilities included maintaining a file with my name on it, a file that had come into existence following the deaths of my wife and child. A lesser man might have felt paranoid; I just tried to make myself feel wanted instead.

‘I wish that was reassuring to know,’ I said.

‘Oh, I’ve tried to help you here and there, you know that.’

‘Your help has nearly got me killed.’

‘But think of the life-changing experiences that you’ve had as a result.’

‘I’m still trying to avoid the most life-changing one of all: dying.’

‘And making a success of it, I see. Here you are, alive and well. I await the reason why with much curiosity, but first, let us eat. Liat has prepared food for us, I believe.’

And although she could not have heard him, and his back was to her so that she could not read his lips, the woman called Liat emerged from the kitchen at that very moment carrying a tray covered with stuffed cabbage and derma, a selection of sweet and hot peppers, three kinds of knishes, and two bowls of salads. She moved another table close to ours so that we would have space to eat.

‘No fish,’ said Epstein. He tapped a finger to the side of his head. ‘I remember these things.’

‘My friends think I’m phobic,’ I said.

‘We all have our peculiarities. I knew a woman once who would faint if someone sliced a tomato in front of her. I have never been able to discover if there is a medical term for it. The closest I’ve come is “lachanophobia”, which appears to be an irrational fear of vegetables.’ He leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘I must confess that, on occasion, I have used it as a way to avoid eating broccoli.’

Liat returned with a bottle of Goose Bay Sauvignon Blanc, poured each of us a glass, then a third for herself. She took the glass with her and sat on the counter, her legs crossed before her. She placed on her lap a book, a copy of Norman Maclean’s Young Men and Fire. She did not eat. Neither did she read, although she opened the book before her. She was watching my lips, and I wondered how large a part she was playing in this particular game of Epstein’s.

I tried the wine. It tasted good.

‘Kosher?’ I asked. I couldn’t quite keep the surprise from my voice.

‘You could be forgiven for thinking otherwise as it’s remarkably palatable, but yes: it’s from New Zealand.’

So we ate, and talked of families, and the troubles of the world, and steered scrupulously clear of darker matters until Liat came to clear the table, and coffee was brought with a separate jug of milk for me, and always I was conscious of how she kept her eyes on my lips, all pretense of not watching me now set aside. I noticed that Epstein had turned slightly so that she would be able more easily to see his lips as well as mine.

‘So,’ said Epstein, ‘why are you here?’

‘Brightwell,’ I said.

‘Brightwell is . . . gone,’ Epstein replied, leaving the ambiguity to hang between us; not dead, but ‘gone’. Epstein knew better than anyone the nature of Brightwell.

‘For now?’ I said.

‘Yes. We might have achieved a more permanent solution had you not shot him to death.’

‘It was satisfying nonetheless.’

‘I’m sure that it was. So is hitting a cockroach with your shoe, until it starts to crawl again. But what’s done is done. Why bring him up now?’

So I told him the story that Marielle Vetters had passed on to me, leaving out only the identities of those involved, and any reference to the town in which they lived.

‘An airplane,’ said Epstein, when I was done. ‘I know nothing about any airplane. I will need to consult. Perhaps others have heard. What else do you have?’

I had made a copy of the list of names that Marielle had given to me.

‘The woman’s father took this from the plane,’ I said, as I slid the photocopy across the table. ‘It was part of a cache of papers in a satchel under one of the pilots’ seats. He left the rest in the wreckage, according to his daughter.’

Epstein took his wire-framed spectacles from his pocket and carefully hooked the ends over his ears. He had a way of appearing frailer than he was, a pantomime of squints and grimaces. It was a role he played even with those who knew better than to be taken in by it. Perhaps it was just habit by this point, or maybe even he could no longer separate the deception from the reality.

Epstein was not a man who tended to show surprise. He had seen too much of this world, and something of the next, for them to hold too many secrets from him. But now his eyes widened behind the magnified lenses, and his lips moved as though he were repeating the names to himself as a kind of litany.

‘Do those names mean anything to you?’ I asked. I had not yet told him about Kenny Chan, and the earlier fates of his wife and former business partner. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Epstein, but I saw no reason to give him all that I had learned, not without something in return.

‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘This one.’

He showed me the paper, his finger resting halfway down the page beneath the name Calvin Buchardt. ‘He worked quietly for a number of liberal causes for many years. He was involved with the ACLU, Searchlight, NAACP, as well as anti-authoritarian movements in South and Central America. He was a textbook white male with a conscience.’

‘I didn’t find his name in any of my searches.’

‘You might have found him had you looked for “Calvin Book”. Only a handful of people knew his real name.’

‘Why the secrecy?’

‘He always claimed that it was for protection, but it was also a way of distancing himself from his family legacy. His grandfather, William Buchardt, was a neo-Nazi of the most virulent kind: a supporter of appeasement in his youth, and an ally of segregationists, homophobes, and anti-Semites throughout his life. Calvin’s father, Edward, refused to have anything to do with the old man once he reached maturity, and Calvin took that a step further by acting as a discreet supporter of the kind of institutions that his grandfather would have put to the torch. It helped that he had a little wealth to his name.’

‘Then what’s he doing on this list?’

‘I suspect that the answer lies in the manner of his passing: he was found gassed to death in a parking garage in Mexico City. It emerged that Calvin was more like his grandfather than his father after all: he had been betraying his friends and their causes for decades. Labor leaders, civil rights workers, lawyers, all given over to their enemies because of Calvin Buchardt.’

‘Are you telling me that he killed himself in a fit of remorse?’

Epstein carefully repositioned his coffee spoon.

‘I expect that he did feel remorse at the end, but he didn’t kill himself. He’d been tied to his car seat, and his tongue had been removed, along with all of his teeth and the tips of his fingers. He had made the mistake of betraying lions as well as lambs. Officially, his remains were never identified, but unofficially . . .’

He returned his attention to the list, and emitted a small tsk of distaste.

‘Davis Tate,’ he said.

‘That one I know something of,’ I said.

‘A preacher of intolerance and calumny,’ said Epstein. ‘He’s a hatemonger, but like most of his kind he lacks a logical consistency, and any kind of backbone. He’s rabidly anti-Islamic but he also distrusts Jews. He hates the president of the United States for being black, but lacks the courage to reveal himself as a racist, so he codifies his racism. He calls himself a Christian, but Christ would disown him. He and his kind should be prosecuted for hate speech, but the powers that be get more exercised about a nipple showing during the Superbowl. Fear and hatred are good currency, Mr Parker. They buy votes in elections.’

He took a sip of wine to wash Tate’s name from his mouth.

‘And now you, Mr Parker? I can only assume that you did some digging of your own, and found something of interest to yourself among these names.’

‘This woman, Solene Escott, was the wife of a man named Kenny Chan,’ I said. ‘The numbers beside her name correspond to the dates of her birth and death. She was killed in a car accident, but that plane went down before, not after, she died. Her death was planned. Brandon Felice, a little farther down, was Kenny Chan’s business partner. He was killed in the course of a gas station robbery not long after Escott died. There was no reason to shoot him. The thieves were masked, and they’d got their money.’

‘Declined.’ Epstein read the word written beside Felice’s name. ‘And is that a letter “T” after the word?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘What does “T” stand for?’

‘Terminated?’ I suggested.

‘Possibly. Probably. Is the husband still alive?’

‘He was stuffed into his own safe and left there to rot, surrounded by his wealth.’

‘Do you have a narrative in mind?’

‘Kenny Chan struck a deal to have his wife and partner killed, but the deal came back to bite him in the end.’

‘Poetic justice, perhaps. You say his wife was killed in an accident?’

‘Accidents can be made to happen, and there were no witnesses. What do you know about a company called Pryor Investments?’

‘I may have read the name, but no more than that. Why?’

‘Pryor Investments was closely involved with the sale of Kenny Chan’s company. The police investigating Chan’s death were discouraged from bothering Pryor. It seems that he may have links to the Defense Department.’

‘I’ll see what we can find out,’ said Epstein.

He carefully folded the list, placed it in the inside pocket of his jacket, and stood. ‘Where are you staying tonight?’ he asked.

‘My ex-partner, Walter Cole, offered me a bed at his place.’

‘I’d prefer it if you stayed here. It may be that I’ll need to contact you urgently, and it would be easier to do so if you remained with Liat. She keeps an apartment upstairs. You’ll be quite comfortable, I assure you. One of my men will remain nearby, just in case. I take it you were shadowed here?’

Epstein was familiar with Angel and Louis.

‘They’re outside.’

‘Let them return to their beds. They won’t be needed. You’ll be safe. I give you my word.’

I called Angel on my cell phone and told him the plan.

‘You happy with the arrangement?’ he asked.

I looked at Liat. She looked at me.

‘I think I can live with it,’ I said, and hung up.

The apartment was more than comfortable. It occupied the top two floors of the building, the rest being given over to storage. It was decorated in a vaguely Middle Eastern style: a lot of cushions, a lot of rugs, the dominant tones of red and orange accented by lamps in the corners instead of a central ceiling light. Liat showed me to a guest bedroom with a small private bathroom next door. I showered to cool myself down. When I came out, the lights were off downstairs, and the apartment was quiet.

I put a towel around my waist and sat by the window, looking out on the streets below. I watched couples pass, hand in hand. I saw a man arguing with a child, and a woman remonstrating with them both. I heard music playing in a building nearby, a piano étude that I could not identify. I thought it was a recording until the player stumbled, and a woman laughed in an easy, loving way, and the man’s voice answered and the music ceased. I felt like an outsider here, even though I knew these streets, this city. It was not mine, though. It had never been mine. I was a stranger in a familiar land.

Liat entered the room shortly before midnight. She was wearing a cream nightdress that ended above her knees, and her hair hung loose on her shoulders. I had been sitting in darkness, but now she lit the bedside lamp before coming to me. She took my hand and bid me rise. In the lamplight, she examined me. She traced the scars of old wounds, touching each one with her fingertips, as though taking an account of the toll on my body. When she was done, she placed her right hand against my face, and her expression was one of intense compassion.

When she kissed me, I felt her tears against my skin, and I tasted them upon my lips. It had been so long, and I thought: accept this small gift, this tender, fleeting moment.

Liat: only later did I discover the meaning of her name.

Liat: You are mine.

I woke shortly after seven. Beside me, the bed was empty. I showered, dressed, and went downstairs. The apartment was quiet. When I entered the kitchen, a middle-aged man was preparing the day’s food, and in the restaurant a woman in her sixties was serving coffee and bagels to a short line of customers. Where Epstein and I had sat the night before, an elderly couple now shared a copy of the Forward.

‘Where is Liat?’ I asked the woman behind the counter.

She shrugged, then fumbled in her apron and produced a note. It was not from Liat, but from Epstein. It read:

Progress being made.

Please stay another night.

E

I left the restaurant. One of Epstein’s young men sat at a table outside, drinking mint tea. He didn’t glance at me when I appeared, nor did he try to follow. I had coffee at a bakery on Houston, and thought of Liat. I wondered where she was, and I thought that I knew.

I believed that she was telling Epstein of my wounds.

I spent the rest of the morning drifting, browsing in bookstores and what few record stores remained in the city – Other Music at 4th and Broadway, Academy Records on West 18th Street – before meeting Angel and Louis for lunch at the Brickyard in Hell’s Kitchen.

‘You look different,’ said Angel.

‘Do I?’

‘Yeah, like the cat that got the cream, except maybe a cat that thinks the cream might have been spiked. This woman you were staying with, Liat, what did she look like, exactly?’

‘Old,’ I said.

‘Really?’

‘And gray.’

‘You don’t say? I bet she was a heavy-set woman too.’

‘Very.’

‘I knew it. So she bore no resemblance to that slim, dark-haired piece of work who was pouring the wine last night?’

‘None whatsoever.’

‘That’s very reassuring. Then I guess we’re not celebrating the end of the longest dry spell since the Dust Bowl?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘we’re not celebrating anything. You ordering the chicken wings?’

‘Yep.’

‘Try not to choke on a bone. I’m not sure I could find it in my heart to save you.’

Louis’s mouth twitched. It might have been a smile.

‘For a man who just got laid by one of the Chosen People, you don’t look too happy,’ he said.

‘That’s a large assumption.’

‘You saying I’m wrong?’

‘I’m not saying anything.’

‘Okay, man, be coy.’

‘Is telling you that it’s none of your damn business either way being coy?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Fine. Then I’m being coy.’

‘Well, either you didn’t get laid, or you did get laid and it was no good, because you still don’t look completely happy.’

He was right. I couldn’t have explained why, even if I’d wanted to, except that I had learned nothing of Liat beyond the scent of her body, the curve of her spine, and the taste of her, while I felt that she had looked deep into me. It was nothing to do with her silence: even as she came her eyes were wide, and her fingers touched my oldest, deepest wounds while her eyes sought the scars on my soul, and I sensed her memorizing those too so that she might tell others of what she had discovered.

‘It was a strange night, that’s all,’ I said.

‘Good sex is wasted on you,’ said Angel, with feeling. ‘You’re a lost cause.’