“I suppose everything, Rabbi Shpilman,” Landsman says. “I don’t mean anything by it.”

“Have you come here with any notions,” Baronshteyn says, “about who might have killed Mendel?”

“Actually—” Landsman begins.

“Actually,” the Verbover rebbe says, cutting Landsman off. He plucks a sheet of paper from the chaos of his desk, tractates, promulgations, and bans, classified documents, adding machine tapes, surveillance reports on the habits of marked men. There’s a second or two of tromboning as he brings the paper within focusing range. The flesh of his right arm sloshes in the wine skin of his sleeve. “These particular homicide detectives are not supposed to be investigating this matter at all. Am I wrong?”

He sets down the paper, and Landsman has to wonder how he ever could have seen anything in the rebbe’s eyes but ten thousand miles of frozen sea. Landsman is shocked, knocked overboard into that cold water. To keep himself afloat, he clings to the ballast of his cynicism. Did the order to black-flag the Lasker case come straight from Verbov Island? Has Shpilman known all along that his son is dead, murdered in room 208 of the Hotel Zamenhof? Did he himself order the killing? Are the business and directives of the Homicide Section of Sitka Central routinely submitted for his inspection? These might make interesting questions if Landsman could get his heart out of his mouth and ask them.

“What did he do?” Landsman says at last. “Exactly why was he dead to you already? What did he know? What, while we’re on the subject, do you know, Rebbe? Rabbi Baronshteyn? I know you people have the fix in. I don’t know what kind of deal you’ve worked for yourselves. But looking around this fine island of yours, I can see, you should excuse the expression, that you are carrying a lot of serious weight.”

“Meyer,” Berko says, a warning in it.

“Don’t you come back here, Landsman,” the rebbe says. “Don’t ever bother anyone in this household, or any of the folk on this island. Stay away from Zimbalist. And stay away from me. If I hear that you have so much as asked one of my people to light your cigarette, will have you and your shield. Is that clear?”

“With all due respect—” Landsman begins.

“An empty formula in your case, surely.”

“Nevertheless,” Landsman says, recovering himself. “If I had a dollar for every time some shtarker with a glandular problem tried to scare me off a case, with all due respect, I wouldn’t have to sit here listening to threats from a man who can’t even manage to shed a tear for the son I’m sure he helped into an early grave. Whether he died twenty-three years ago or last night.”

“Please do not mistake me for some two-bit Hirshbeyn Avenue wiseguy,” the rebbe says. “I am not threatening you.”

“No? What are you, blessing me?”

“I’m looking at you, Detective Landsman. I understand that like my son, poor thing, you may not have been provided by the Holy Name with the most admirable of fathers.”

“Rav Heskel!” Baronshteyn cries.

But the rabbi ignores his gabay and moves on before Landsman can ask him what the hell he thinks he knows about poor old Isidor.

“I can see that at one time, again like Mendel, you may have been something very much more than you are today. You may have been a fine shammes. But I doubt that you have ever qualified as a great sage.”

“On the contrary,” Landsman says.

“So. Please believe me when I tell you that you need to find another use for the time that remains to you.”

Inside the Verbover Clock, an old system of hammers and chimes takes up a melody, older still, that welcomes to every Jewish home and house of prayer the bride of the end of the week.

“We’re out of time,” says Baronshteyn. “Gentlemen.”

The detectives stand, and the men wish one another the joy of the Sabbath. Then the detectives put on their hats and turn for the door.

“We’ll need someone to identify the body,” Berko says.

“Unless you want us to put him out by the curb,” Landsman says.

“We will send someone tomorrow,” the rebbe says. He turns in his chair, showing them his back. He bows his head, then reaches for a pair of canes hanging from hook on the wall behind him. The canes have silver heads, chased with gold. He stabs them into the carpet and then, with the wheeze of antique machinery, hoists himself to his feet. “After the Sabbath.”

Baronshteyn follows them back down the stairs to the Rudashevsky by the door. Over their heads, the floorboards of the study utter a grievous creak. They hear the sharp taps and rain-barrel slosh of the rebbe’s tread. The family will have gathered in the back part of the house, waiting for him to come and bless them all.

Baronshteyn opens the front door of the replica house.

Shmerl and Yossele step into the hall, snow on their hats and shoulders, snow in their wintry gray eyes. The brothers or cousins or cousin-brothers form the points of a triangle with the indoor version, a three-fingered fist of solid Rudashevsky closing around Landsman and Berko.

Baronshteyn shoves his narrow face in close to Landsman’s. Landsman lids his nostrils against a smell of tomato seeds, tobacco, sour cream.

“This is a little island,” Baronshteyn says. “But there are a thousand places on it where a noz, even a decorated shammes, could get lost and never come out. So be careful, Detectives, all right? And a good Sabbath to you both.”

17

Look at Landsman, one shirttail hanging out, snow-dusted porkpie knocked to the left, coat hooked to a thumb over his shoulder. Hanging on to a sky-blue cafeteria ticket as if it’s the strap keeping him on his feet. His cheek needs the razor. His back is killing him. For reasons he doesn’t understand — or maybe for no reason — he hasn’t had a drink of alcohol since nine-thirty in the morning. Standing in the chrome and-tile desolation of the Polar-Shtern Kafeteria at nine o’clock on a Friday night, in a snowstorm, he’s the loneliest Jew in the Sitka District. He can feel the shifting of something dark and irresistible inside him, a hundred tons of black mud on a hillside, gathering its skirts to go sliding. The thought of food, even a golden ingot of the noodle pudding that is the crown jewel of the Polar-Shtern Kafeteria, makes him queasy. But he hasn’t eaten all day.

In fact, Landsman knows that he is not, by a long shot, the loneliest Jew in the Sitka District. He scorns himself for even entertaining the notion. The presence of self-pity in his thoughts is proof that he is circling the bung hole, spiraling inward and down, down, down. To resist this Coriolis motion, Landsman relies on three techniques. One is work, but work is now officially a joke. One is alcohol, which makes the drop come faster and go deeper and last longer but helps him not to care. The third is to have a bite. So he carries his blue ticket and his tray to the big Litvak lady behind the glass counter, with the hair net and the polyethylene gloves and the metal spoon, and forks it over.

“The cheese blintzes, please,” he says, not wanting cheese blintzes or even bothering to see if they are on the menu tonight. “How are you, Mrs. Nemintziner?”

Mrs. Nemintziner gentles three tight blintzes onto a white plate with a blue stripe on the rim. To ornament the evening meals of the lonely souls of Sitka, she has prepared several dozen slices of pickled crab apple on lettuce leaves. She tricks out Landsman’s dinner with one of these corsages. Then she punches his ticket and slings his plate at him. “How should I be?” she says.

Landsman acknowledges that the answer to this question is beyond him. He carries his tray of blintzes filled with cottage cheese to the coffee urns and drains off a mug’s worth. He hands over his punched ticket and his cash to the cashier, then wanders across the wasteland of the dining area, past two of his rivals for the title of loneliest Jew. He heads for the table he prefers, by the front windows, where he can keep an eye on the street. At the next table, somebody left a half-eaten plate of corned beef and boiled potatoes and a half-empty glass of what appears to be black-cherry soda. The abandoned meal, and the stained crumple of the napkin fill Landsman with a mild nausea of misgiving. But this is his table, and it is a fact that a noz likes to be able to keep an eye on the street. Landsman sits down, tucks his napkin into his collar, cuts apart a cheese blintz, and puts some into his mouth. He chews. He swallows. Good boy.