The earth is the same earth, White Raven; it is only the people who are different. Or at least they appear to be. And when the presence of prior incarnations is denied . . .
She sounded like a New Age preacher.
And don’t use my Indian name, he told her. Definitely not in public. They’ll come looking for my feathers and tomahawk.
JACKIE BRENDEL is reticent when people ask about her religion. It underscores the fact that she is the only Jew on the eighty-fourth floor of the North Tower. Lenox understands her. He also gets angry when his investigative talents are attributed to the heritage passed down from his forefathers.
The Jewish Question works as an accountant for the Secret Service. A busy bee, she sits hunched over her desk for long hours, surrounded by numbers and only rarely taking breaks. Her hair is dyed auburn. She has twice been named Most Valuable Employee.
Hey, Lenox, have you heard the latest one?
Lenox smiles.
What’s an anti-Semite?
Someone who hates Jews just a little more than necessary.
And what’s an Israeli?
Someone you can hate a little more than a Jew.
Lenox laughs. Of course he does.
Except for the occasional hello, they have never spoken. He ran into her twice at the coffee station where she was pouring muddy liquid out of the carafe very slowly, as if calculating how much she could take before being obliged to make a fresh pot for the other employees.
Lenox tries to catch her in the hallways, but she always slips away. Finally, he sends her an e-mail:
Dear Ms. Brendel,
I have willingly accepted a request from the State of Israel to help locate an Israeli citizen who entered the US legally and has not been seen since.
I would be very grateful if you would be kind enough to answer a few of my questions related to your people.
Yours sincerely,
Chief Inspector Simon T. Lenox
Senior Investigator, Missing Persons,
New York Police Department
Annexed to the Secret Service
From Lenox’s notepad:
After condensing the clues, what is left?
A Russian female cosmonaut. Duty Free. Night flight. Military duffle bag. Khaki underwear. Boydem Dark Side of the Moon. Hiking backpack. Javelin.
EVERY TIME he writes down a group of clues, the javelin annoyingly reappears.
IN THE second stage of his investigation, Lenox always experiences distress at the prospect of invading a stranger’s private domain, probing the miniscule habits and daily routines of a man he has no intimate connection with. Only later does he become aware of the percolating pleasure, the joy of voyeurism. To cleanse his conscience, Lenox pretends the subject is a fictional character whom he will never encounter face to face. But for some reason, this case does not surrender to the familiar pattern. No distress. No conscience. Not even any pleasure.
Lenox is suspended in a physical state somewhere between gas and liquid, while his feelers work hard to capture the true nature of the man he is looking for—the bone marrow that quivers inside the rigid formal uniform worn by a person when he goes out into the world. His offenses, the ways he repays those who mistreat him and sometimes spurns those who favor him. The strategies he employs to climb up the ladder. The fine threads of deceit, the fawning before supervisors, the deposit of resentments that amass into an impenetrable stratum.
Lenox is a lightening rod for weaknesses.
The nose pickers, the ball scratchers, the zit poppers, the hair pullers, the nail biters. The ones who hit, the ones who ogle at young girls, the child rapists, the incestuous. He has exposed them all during his career. A river of Jack Daniels has flowed through the NYPD hallways.
Does the Israeli remember to put up the seat when he pees?
Lenox writes the question in his notepad.
JACKIE BRENDEL does not write back. Lenox stands at his computer angrily and types:
Dear Ms. Brendel,
In using the term “your people,” I had no intention of casting doubts, heaven forbid, on your absolute loyalty to our country.
Yours,
S. T. L.
Simon T. Lenox has always been able to figure out the reason for a person going missing early on in his investigation. The spectrum of human motives is fairly limited: jealousy, narrow-mindedness, revenge, fear. None of these fit this case.
Assuming the Israelis are not keeping some essential piece of information from him, the subject has no enemies, no debts, no criminal involvement; he is not a foreign agent, not under the influence of medications, not depressed, and not suicidal.
Not, not, not.
But there must be something that he is.
The questions melt in Lenox’s boiling brain. He can barely observe his own condition.
Perhaps, unwittingly, Lenox is not conducting a search but a hunt. His request to publish the missing man’s picture in the press and put him on the front page of the missing persons’ site was met with firm refusal from the commissioner. As was the suggestion to offer a monetary reward for information. If only he knew why this Israeli was not being treated like other missing persons.
They look out at him from the website, rows and rows of faces. An innocent web surfer would think he’d come across a family photo album. Their digital eyes flicker on the screen. No desperation or pleading. Those are reserved for the circle of loved ones waiting in torment. Lenox does not bother to ask for updates anymore.
Which of these people will never be found?
IF THERE is a son—that must mean there was a wife.
A wife, however, is no guarantee of sons.
Lenox’s second wife told him: You don’t deserve it. His third wife blamed his faulty sperm. And the first wife? What, if anything, did she say?
Dear Inspector Lenox,
I have never been to Israel, and not all citizens of the state are Jewish.
Respectfully,
Jacqueline Winona Brendel
Chief Accountant, Secret Service
ALTHOUGH HE could easily look online, Simon T. Lenox chooses to open up an atlas he finds in the Secret Service storeroom, where they pile up the books no one uses anymore.
The atlas is dusty. Hasn’t been opened for years. Outdated geographical boundaries stretch over the pages’ inner hinge, which is as loose as the perforation on a boarding pass. Lenox’s forefathers used to winter in one area and relocate in summer. Yet they viewed themselves not as nomads, but as dwellers of everyland.
Israel fits under his pinky finger. He swipes at the image as though it were a spill and instinctively licks his finger, expecting to taste blood.
His fingers start to walk. He surrounds the sea, passes wearily over Europe, plods through Asia, crosses the Bering Strait with two fingers, and goes down from Canada to the US border.
On a whim, he calls an outdoor gear store and gives them a description of the Israeli.
The young woman laughs: Have you lost your mind? Do you have any idea how many nature buffs we get in here?
Lenox insists. He can fax a photograph over—maybe someone will remember.
He hears her mutter: Some asshole is posing as a cop. She hangs up.