A sealed coffin. How convenient.
Lenox, accustomed to seeing butchered bodies, prefers not to look at natural death straight on. He didn’t even go to his grandmother’s funeral.
He doesn’t remember who instructed him to press the widow’s hand and murmur, “You should have no more sorrow.” A ludicrous phrase. After all, if there is one thing in the world that is not only probable but certain, it is sorrow.
Jews haggle with the future, using idioms passed down from generation to generation like whispered spells that have lost all power, although they refuse to admit it.
As ordered by the commissioner, Lenox accompanied the convoy to the Jewish cemetery in Queens. The coffin was gently lowered into the grave without a sound. The dead man vanished with no exposed face frozen in death, no expression of relief or torment, no outline of the body that once was. No unnecessary sounds that keep echoing out.
But in Israel they put the dead person straight into the earth, like a burden to be gotten rid of.
YOU WILL have sorrow and your children will have sorrow and your children’s children will have sorrow.
Lenox, though, being childless, will be spared the sorrow.
There will be no one to have sorrow after him.
Perhaps that would be his consolation, were he to allow himself to wallow in self-pity. It’s a good thing he is not one of those naïve people who beg for life to stop moving after they are gone. The way he sees it, any remnants of grief are tossed into the grave, with or without a coffin, and that’s that. As though they never existed. As far as Lenox is concerned, it would be best to have no mourning at all.
Reconstructing that Jewish funeral, he suddenly recalls Jackie Brendel’s presence at the Queens cemetery, like a detail swallowed up in the investigation that now suddenly emerges, surrounded with a soft halo. He remembers her standing outside the circle.
Which of his wives did she remind him of . . .
When Lenox starts pacing, with his notepad between his teeth, his colleagues beyond the partitions always know he’s reaching the critical stage of an investigation.
PROFILE OF an Israeli. Intermediary Report:
Frenetic. Control freak. Delusions of invincibility. What happened will not happen again. Charges ahead.
How come these Israelis never get tired? Or perhaps in this case the tables have turned, and it is the javelin that is launching the thrower.
Simon T. Lenox waits for a signal, like a buffalo who senses a hunter closing in on him, weapon aimed, yet still the beast does not move.
He murmurs the missing man’s name for the first time: Liam Emanuel. It sounds foreign. And yet . . .
WHY THE javelin throw? A sport so devoid of glory. Lenox pounces at the computer and sucks out data. The challenge is to throw the javelin in mid-sprint, since even the slightest deceleration will slow the spear’s velocity and result in a huge waste of effort.
If only he knew what the destination was. Deep down, he admires Liam Emanuel for pushing his own limits, as though he has trained for this race his whole life. From whom was the Israeli expecting applause?
Lenox paces up and down the hallways, reading and rereading the printout, tempted to put his own body to the test, even if his colleagues scoff at his clumsy movements.
His body is ungainly. His belly folds over his belt, and the flesh on his arms is flabby. It’s a pity he never joined the cult of physical fitness worshippers. If he tries to throw a javelin he might end up hitting someone behind him.
A legal throw must be over the shoulder or the upper arm, he reads out loud. The thrower may not turn his or her back on the direction of the throw, and in order for the throw to count, the javelin’s tip must penetrate the ground and leave a mark.
He is suddenly visited by an image: A blazing javelin soars toward the window, aiming its fiery tip right at him.
In his new office, Simon T. Lenox flinches and almost falls, then bursts into laughter that makes the windows shudder. Hallucinations! How he mocked his grandmother for them. Once he told her she had a Jewish disease—and he didn’t want to catch it.
Jackie Brendel is stingy with her information. Keeping her cards close to her chest. Maybe that is the common thread linking the Jewish source with its Mediterranean offshoots.
Still, there is something charming about this woman, though he has never been willing to admit it before.
LENOX SPENDS the day studying the marginal sport.
In the “American grip,” the javelin is held diagonally along the crease of the palm, with the pinky finger and thumb wrapped around the top and bottom, and the three remaining fingers gripping the cord.
Complicated? No more than a manual for a DVD player or a newfangled washing machine, which manages to obfuscate even the simplest tasks.
Is there an “Israeli grip”? He has already learned that the Israelis never settle for what already exists, always feeling the need to reinvent the wheel.
The person who notified the police of Liam Emanuel’s disappearance was his ex-wife, who had not loosened her grip even after they were formally separated. Here is the key to the mystery: she probably wanted to make sure she wouldn’t be left out of the inheritance, that her former partner wouldn’t make off with a treasure. Greed—the most common motive for all crimes and misdemeanors. Why would he have thought the map-stain nation’s members were any different?
Intermediary Conclusion: Liam Emanuel turned his apartment upside down because he was looking for his father’s will.
Before he shuts down the computer, Lenox writes:
Dear Ms. Brendel,
Do you know what a boydem is?
He does not sign the message.
He’s not sure if the pressure in his groin is from his bladder or his erection.
PROFILE OF an Investigator. Final Conclusion:
Frenetic. Control freak. Delusions of invincibility. Charges ahead.
Just like the Israelis—a patently discomforting comparison.
He has to close this case, soon.
Lenox paces back and forth, biting his notepad. Behind his back they always gossip: it’s his Indian blood. They never say it out in the open, not wanting to be suspected of racism. For a moment, Lenox allows himself to take pleasure in the sweet pressure in his loins.
TAKING ADVANTAGE of Lenox’s trip to the coffee station, Jackie Brendel slips another note under his door. Her handwriting is less neat this time, and the letters wander onto the margins. She does not bother with polite openings.
A Jew is buried in a coffin in the Diaspora, but in Israel only the shrouds separate him from the earth.
There is no sign-off either.
How can she respond to a question he has not asked, and yet not answer the question he did ask?
AT THE end of the son’s affidavit there is something else. He quoted the last words Liam Emanuel told him at the cemetery. They were standing some distance apart. The son had started walking out on a different path than the one he entered on, since a person must not enter and leave a cemetery the same way. Liam Emanuel, scorning such superstition, demonstratively turned to leave the same way he came in. He shoved the crumpled paper into his pocket with his earth-stained hand.
And then he said something to his son.
A meaningless mumble, the Israeli investigator determined.
If only this were a different case . . .
THERE’S NOWHERE to go from here.