They turn onto Lincoln and roll along the shoreline, past Oysshtelung Island and the broken promise of the Safety Pin, headed toward the Untershtat. In nine minutes they will arrive at the Hotel Zamenhof. Those eyes of hers drown him in a jar of ether. They stick him with pins to a corkboard.

“Sure, all right, why not?” Landsman says. Shprintzl Rudashevsky fixes him a cold bottle of ginger ale. Landsman holds it to his temples, then takes a swallow, fighting it down with a sensation of medicinal virtue.

“I haven’t sat this close to a strange man in forty five years, Detective,” Batsheva Shpilman says. “It’s very wrong. I should be ashamed.”

“Particularly given your choice of male companions,” Landsman says.

“Do you mind?” She lowers the black moire, and her face is gone from the conversation. “I’ll feel more comfortable.”

“Suit yourself.”

“Nu,” she says. The veil puffs out with her breath.

“All right. Yes, I wanted to talk to you.”

“I wanted to talk to you, too.”

“Why? Do you think that I killed my son?”

“No, ma’am, I don’t. But I was hoping you might know who did.”

“So!” she declares, a low thrill in her voice, as if she has caught Landsman out. “He was murdered.”

“Uh, well, yes, he was, ma’am. Didn’t — What did your husband tell you?”

“What my husband tells me,” she says, making it sound rhetorical, like the title of a very slim tract. “You’re married, Detective?”

“I was.”

“The marriage failed?”

“I guess that’s the best way to put it.” He reflects for a moment. “I guess that’s really the only way.”

“My marriage is a complete success,” she says with out a trace of boastfulness or pride. “Do you understand what that means?”

“No, ma’am,” Landsman says. “I’m not sure that I do.”

“In every marriage, there are things,” she begins.

She shakes her head once, and the veil trembles. “One of my grandsons was at my house today, before the funeral. Nine years old. I put the television for him in the sewing room, you’re not supposed to, but what does it matter, the little shkotz was bored. I sat with him ten minutes, watching. It was that cartoon program, the wolf that chases the blue rooster.”

Landsman says that he knows it.

“Then you know,” she says, “how that wolf can run in the middle of the air. He knows how to fly, but only so long as he still thinks he’s touching the ground. As soon as he looks down, and sees where he is, and understands what’s going on, then he falls and smashes into the ground.”

“I’ve seen that bit,” Landsman says.

“That’s how it is in a successful marriage,” says the rabbi’s wife. “I have spent the last fifty years running in the middle of the air. Not looking down. Outside of what God requires, I never talk to my husband. Or vice versa.”

“My parents had it worked out the same way,” Landsman says. He wonders if he and Bina might have lasted longer if they had given this traditional route a try. “Only they didn’t much trouble themselves over God’s requirements.”

“I heard about Mendel’s death from my son-in-law, Aryeh. And that man never tells me anything but lies.”

Landsman hears someone jumping up and down on a leather valise. It turns out to be the sound of Shprintzl Rudashevsky’s laughter.

“Go on,” Mrs. Shpilman says. “Please. Tell me.”

“Go on. Nu. Your son was shot. In a way that — Well, to be frank, ma’am, he was executed.” Landsman is glad for the veil when he pronounces that word. “Who by, that we can’t say. We’ve learned that some men, two or three men, were looking for Mendel, asking around. These men might not have been very nice. That was a few months back. We know he was using heroin when he died. So, at the end, he felt nothing. No pain, I mean.”

“Nothing, you mean,” she corrects him. Two blots, blacker than black silk, spread across the veil. “Go on.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. About your son. I should have said that right off.”

“I was relieved that you didn’t.”

“We think that whoever did this to him was better than amateur. But look, I admit it, since Friday morning we’re getting more or less nowhere with our investigation of your son’s death:”

“You keep saying ‘we,’ ” she says. “Meaning, naturally, Sitka Central.”

Now he wishes he could see her eyes. Because he gets the distinct idea that she is toying with him. That she knows he has no right or authority at his back.

“Not exactly,” Landsman says.

“The Homicide division.”

“No.”

“You and your partner.”

“Again, no.”

“Well, then, maybe I’m confused,” she says.

“Who is this ‘we’ getting nowhere investigating my son’s death?”

“At this point? I, hmm, it’s sort of a theoretical inquiry.”

“I see.”

“By an independent entity.”

“My son-in-law,” she says, “claims that you have been suspended because you came by the island. Came by my house. You insulted my husband. You blamed him for being a bad father to Mendel. Aryeh told me that your badge has been taken away.”

Landsman rolls the cool shaft of the ginger ale glass along his forehead. “Yes, well. This entity I’m talking about,” he says. “So maybe they don’t give out with badges.”

“Only with theories.”

“That’s right.”

“Such as?”

“Such as. All right, here’s one: You were in occasional, maybe even regular, communication with Mendel. You heard from him. You knew where he was. He called you up every once in a while. He sent you postcards. Maybe you even saw him from time to time, on the sly. This secret ride home that you and Friend Rudashevsky are so kindly providing me, for example, it sort of gives me ideas in that direction. ”

“I have not seen my son, my Mendel, in over twenty years,” she says. “Now I never will again.”

“But why, Mrs. Shpilman? What happened? Why did he leave the Verbovers? What did he do? Was there a break? An argument?”

She doesn’t answer for a minute, like she’s fighting the long habit of saying nothing to anyone, let alone to a secular policeman, about Mendel. Or maybe she’s fighting the mounting sense of pleasure she will take, in spite of herself, in remembering her son aloud.

“Such a match I made for him,” she says.

25

A thousand guests, some from as far away as Miami Beach and Buenos Aires. Seven catering trailers and a Volvo truck stuffed with food and wine. Gifts, swag, and tributes in heaps to rival the Baranof Range. Three days of fasting and prayer. The entire Muzikant family of klezmorim, enough for half a symphony orchestra. Every last Rudashevsky, even the great-grandfather, half drunk and shooting off an ancient Nagant revolver into the air. For a week leading up to the day, a line of people in the hall, out the door, around the corner, and two blocks down Ringelblum Avenue, hoping for a blessing from the bridegroom king. All day and night a noise around the house like a mob in search of a revolution.

An hour before the wedding they were still there, waiting for him, hats and slick umbrellas in the street. He was not likely, this late, to see them or hear their pleas and sob stories. But you never knew. It was always Mendel’s nature to make the unpredictable move.

She was at the window, peering through the curtains at the petitioners, when the girl came to say that Mendel was gone and that two ladies were here to see her. Mrs. Shpilman’s bedroom overlooked the side yard, but she could see between the neighboring houses through to the corner: hats and umbrellas, slick with rain. Jews shouldered together, soaked in longing for a glimpse of Mendel.

Wedding day, funeral day.

“Gone,” she said. She did not turn from the window.

She had the sensation of mingled futility and fulfillment one feels in dreams. There was no point in asking the question, and yet it was the only thing she was able to say. “Gone where?”