The rebbe catches Landsman trying to eavesdrop and puts his eyebrow muscles to more strenuous use. “Right,” says Landsman. “It’s like this. It so happens, Rabbi Shpilman, that I live in the Zamenhof. It’s a hotel, not a good one, down on Max Nordau Street. Last night the manager knocked on my door nd asked me would I mind coming down to have a look at another guest in the hotel. The manager had been worried about this guest. He was afraid the Jew might have overdosed. And so he had let himself into the room. It turned out that the man was dead. He was registered under an assumed name. He had no ‘dentification.’ But there were a few hints of this and that in his room. And today my partner and I followed up on one of those hints, and it led us here. To you. We believe — we are all but certain — that the dead man was your son.”

Baronshteyn sidles back into the room as Landsman is giving the news. His face has been wiped, as if with a soft cloth, of all prints or smudges of emotion.

“All but certain,” the rebbe says dully, nothing moving in his face but the lights in his eyes. “I see. All but certain. Hints of this and that.”

“We have a picture,” Landsman says. Once again he produces like a grim magician Shpringer’s photograph of the dead Jew in 208. He starts to pass it to the rebbe but consideration, a sudden flutter of sympathy, stops his hand.

“Perhaps it would be best,” says Baronshteyn, “if I—”

“No,” the rebbe says.

Shpilman takes the photograph from Landsman and, with both hands, brings it very close to his face, straight up into the precinct of his right eyeball. He’s only nearsighted, but there is something vampiric in the gesture, as if he’s trying to drain a vital liquor from the photograph with the lamprey mouth of his eye. He measures it from top to bottom and end to end. His expression never alters. Then he lowers the photograph to the clutter of his desk and clucks his tongue once.

Baronshteyn steps forward to take a look at the picture, but the rebbe waves him off and says, “It’s him.”

Landsman, his instruments dialed up to full gain, widest aperture, is tuned to catch some faint radiation of regret or satisfaction that might escape the singularities at the heart of Baronshteyn’s eyes. And it’s there; a brief tracer arc of particles lights them up. But what Landsman detects in that instant, to his surprise, is disappointment. For an instant Aryeh Baronshteyn looks like a, man who just drew an ace of spades and is contemplating the fan of useless diamonds in his hand. He exhales a short breath, half a sigh, and walks slowly back to his lectern.

“Shot,” the rebbe says.

“Once,” says Landsman.

“By whom, please?”

“Well, we don’t know that.”

“Any witnesses?”

“Not so far.”

“Motive? ”

Landsman says no, then turns to Berko for confirmation, and Berko gives his head a somber shake.

“Shot.” The Rebbe shakes his head as if marveling: How do you like that? With no discernible change in his voice or manner, he says, “You are well, Detective Shemets?”

“I can’t complain, Rabbi Shpilman.”

“Your wife and children? Healthy and strong?”

“They could be worse.”

“Two sons, I believe, one an infant.”

“Right, as usual.”

The massive cheeks tremble in assent or satisfaction. The rebbe murmurs a conventional blessing on the heads of Berko’s little boys. Then his gaze rolls in Landsman’s direction, and when it locks on him, Landsman feels a stab of panic. The rebbe knows everything. He knows about the mosaic chromosome and the boy Landsman sacrificed to preserve hard-earned illusions about the tendency of life to get things wrong. And now he’s going to offer a blessing for Django, too. But the rebbe says nothing, and the gears in the Verbover Clock grind away. Berko glances at his wrist watch; time to get home to the candles and the wine. To his blessed boys, who could be worse. To Ester Malke, with the braided loaf of another child tucked somewhere in her belly. He and Landsman have no dispensation to be here past sundown, investigating a case that officially no longer exists. No one’s life is at stake. There is nothing to be done to save any of them, not the yids in this room, not the yid, poor thing, who brought them here.

“Rabbi Shpilman?”

“Yes, Detective Landsman?”

“Are you all right?”

“Do I seem ‘all right’ to you, Detective Landsman?”

“I’ve only just had the honor of meeting you,” Landsman says carefully, more in deference to Berko’s sensibilities than to the rabbi or his office. “But to be honest, you seem all right.”

“In a way that appears suspicious? That seems to inculpate me, perhaps?”

“Rebbe, please, no jokes,” Baronshteyn says.

“As to that,” Landsman says, ignoring the mouth-piece, “I wouldn’t venture an opinion.”

“My son has been dead to me for many years, Detective. Many years. I tore my clothes and said kadish and lit a candle for his loss long ago.” The words themselves trade in anger and bitterness, but his tone breathtakingly void of emotion. “What you found in the Zamenhof Hotel — was it the Zamenhof? — what you found there, if it is him, that was only a husk. The kernel was long since cut out and spoiled.”

“A husk,” Landsman says. “I see.”

He knows what a hard thing it can be to have fathered a heroin addict. He has seen this kind of coldness before. But something rankles him about these yids who tear their lapels and sit shiva for living children.

It seems to Landsman to make a mockery of both the living and the dead.

“Now, all right. From what I have heard,” Landsman continues, “and I certainly don’t claim to understand it, your son — as a boy — he showed certain, well, indications, or … that he might be … I’m not sure I have this right. The Tzaddik Ha-Dor, is that it? If the conditions were right, if the Jews of this generation were worthy, then he might reveal himself as, uh, as Messiah.”

“It’s ridiculous, nu, Detective Landsman,” the rebbe says. “The very idea makes you smile.”

“Not at all,” Landsman says. “But if your son was Messiah, then I guess we’re all in trouble. Because right now he’s lying in a drawer down in the basement of Sitka General.”

“Meyer,” Berko says.

“With all due respect,” Landsman puts in.

The rebbe doesn’t answer at first, and when he finally speaks, it is with evident care. “We are taught by the Baal Shem Tov, of blessed memory, that a man with the potential to be Messiah is born into every generation. This is the Tzaddik Ha-Dor. Now, Mendel. Mendele, Mendele.”

He closes his eyes. He might be remembering. He might be fighting back tears. He opens them. They’re dry, and he remembers.

“Mendel had a remarkable nature as a boy. I’m not talking about miracles. Miracles are a burden for tzaddik, not the proof of one. Miracles prove nothing except to those whose faith is bought very cheap, sir. There was something in Mendele. There was a fire. This is a cold, dark place, Detectives. A gray, wet place. Mendele gave off light and warmth. You wanted to stand close to him. To warm your hands, to melt the ice on your beard. To banish the darkness for a minute or two. But then when you left Mendele, you stayed warm, and it seemed like there was a little more light, maybe one candle’s worth, in the world. And that was when you realized the fire was inside of you all the time. And that was the miracle. Just that.” He strokes his beard, pulling on it, as if trying to think of something he might have missed. “Nothing else.”

“When was the last time you saw him?” Berko says.

“Twenty-three years ago,” the rebbe says without hesitation. “On the twentieth of Elul. No one in this house has spoken to or seen him since then.”

“Not even his mother?”

The question shocks them all, even Landsman, the yid who asked it.

“Do you suppose, Detective Landsman, that my wife would ever attempt to subvert my authority with respect to this or any other matter?”