A miserable case. Who cares about a piece of real estate that some old Jewish guy once bought as an investment and left to his Israeli descendants? Is that all there is? Some drama!
Not at his age. Not in his position. He will not babysit a petty Israeli who won’t share his property with the other heirs. What sort of treasure are we talking about, anyway? Probably some moldy dump in Brooklyn or Queens. Big fucking deal. A real find. Liam Emanuel is holed up there, sitting on his Israeli ass downing Jack Daniels and laughing at everyone. You gotta admire the Israelis—wrapping the whole world around their little finger. The ex-wife managed to keep two governments—including one superpower—on their toes just so she could sink her teeth into a juicy piece of the pie. Inheritance squabble. That’s the whole story.
Lenox leans over the fax machine and feeds in his intermediary report. At least he’ll be spared having to identify the body.
Attn: Brig. Gen. Yoav Rosen-Vardi, Israel Police Attaché to the United States, Washington, DC
Re: Israeli Missing Person
Dear Sir,
Following a vigorous investigation into your case, I have found no evidence that the Israeli citizen Liam Emanuel is involved in any act of a criminal nature, or has fallen victim to a hostile plot. The earth has not swallowed him up. It would be more accurate to say that he is the one who has swallowed the earth.
I must therefore conclude that there is no justification for further involvement of US law authorities. Your missing person wishes to enjoy the fruits of an investment in an American asset. I advise notifying any of his relatives who may still be concerned about his well-being that the evidence points to a person who acted lucidly, and, if I may be permitted, out of sound financial considerations. Your man is not mixed up in anything un-kosher.
Kosher. Finally a Jewish word. Lenox has such fun typing it.
IN THE dimness that is never completely dark, Lenox places his report on the commissioner’s desk. Manhattan glows outside the windows. An arrowlike city shining bright. For Lenox, it is an unimpeachable place, although he has always been reluctant to award it the overwrought title of “home.” His eyes have stopped taking in its beauty. He has grown accustomed to it, as one does to a pair of tattered slippers. An island bought for twenty-four dollars from Indians. His naïve forefathers. He wouldn’t have walked into that trap.
He gives his tower’s southern twin a farewell glance. A French tightrope walker once tiptoed over a cable strung between the two towers. Twelve mountain climbers have scaled their walls. Three parachuted down safely, and George Willig was arrested and fined one cent for each of the hundred floors he climbed.
Lenox permits himself a moment of sentimentality at the sight of this urban evergreen forest in its seductive packaging. The spirits of hunters and herds of buffalo and coyotes, assuming they exist, are now roaming the mazes erected by white people in an island of rock. The Israeli, who is not his at all, was not swallowed up by the earth; he probably wanted to be buried in a coffin rather than thrown straight into a grave.
A barbaric custom. There’s no understanding them. Israelis, Jews, same thing. As far as Lenox is concerned, the affair is over.
The Israeli’s photograph, still perched on the stack of paperwork, reflects the Manhattan glow. His narrowed eyes seem to be winking.
Bye-bye, you Israeli fucker.
A QUICK nod at the night watchman, and Lenox is out on Fulton Street, corner of Greenwich. Flooded with relief, he skips the subway station and decides to walk uptown.
Pain in the ass of a nation. With their ancient death cults. After all, the solution to the mystery is always less complicated than one thinks. You have to look at the first circle of acquaintances, because the harasser is almost always someone who knew the victim. But Lenox hasn’t exposed a perpetrator in this case—only the missing man’s well-wishers who were suffocating him under the pretext of concern.
Digging through his coat pocket for his jangling bunch of keys, he finds a note from Jackie Brendel. When did she sneak that in? He angrily unfolds the paper and reads under the light that glows from the Towers.
A boydem, the Jewish woman wrote, is a hidden opening. A place of shelter inside a house. A Yiddish term that made its way into Hebrew.
The letters start to bleed in the rain and Lenox has to huddle close to the building to read the rest of the note.
At times of trouble, one can seek refuge there.
WHAT IS she talking about? Refuge from what? There was no apparent threat.
Lenox himself is starting to toy with the idea of disappearing. When you disappear, no one has any idea what you’re doing, and you are free to navigate beyond the awareness of those who would encircle you. What is there to bind Lenox to his present existence except the shackles of habit? His time card, a handful of friends as worn out as he is, and the occasional fuck. The familiar stomping grounds of life. Even his youthful yearning to bring about revolution is no more than a feeble flicker when he awakes, and it quickly fades into daily routine. How tempting to just cut away. To run and throw the javelin at the same time. On the empty streets of Lower Manhattan, Simon T. Lenox practices. He doesn’t get very far from the Twin Towers before he starts panting. He tries to gain momentum, reciting the rules:
The javelin must be gripped above the ear, higher than the head, with the tip aimed forwards and tilted down. The most common mistake is to swerve before letting go, which makes the javelin miss its target.
Who would eventually notify the authorities of his disappearance?
Who gives a fuck.
The advantage of not having an inner circle is the freedom to act without guilt. He mustn’t become a cliché. If there’s one thing Lenox has learned from the Israeli, it is that.
The end of this case also means no more dealings with Jackie Brendel and her impenetrable gibberish. Why does he feel as if the Jewish woman is rebuking him? He did everything by the book, he wasn’t sloppy, and he reached his conclusions honestly and unbiasedly. The Israeli is alive and well, either here or somewhere else. Let’s respect his choice and leave him alone.
Lenox holds the note out and lets the rain soak it. Jackie Brendel’s words melt away. He balls up the soggy mess and launches it overhand at the Hudson, without knowing whether or not it hits the target. The dark waters lap at Manhattan. According to the official definition, it isn’t even a river, because it is deeper than the body of water into which it flows.
THE RUN did him well. Lenox can’t resist calling the commissioner at home to announce that he’s cracked the case. Beneath the façade of praise, the commissioner is clearly annoyed, perhaps by the invasion of his privacy. The conversation does not go as planned. Lenox is left with a bad taste in his mouth. Maybe Jackie Brendel is meddling behind the scenes, trying to get ahead at his expense. Even if there are still a few unanswered questions, the final conclusion is unaltered. The Israeli has come to no harm, and if he alienated his relatives and left home slamming the door behind him, that is no business for the authorities.
Jack Daniels is an excellent cure for doubt, but the shops are closed. Maybe he did not study all the data properly and unwittingly went off track. Perhaps he should have, from the start, sailed backwards along all the branches of the winding generational path, and kept rowing towards what came before what came before. Liam Emanuel and his son. And the late grandfather. He had died of natural causes and been given a proper funeral. Why should Lenox be expected to go back to the intersection at which the Jews and the Israelis parted ways?
Lenox’s grandmother had a long-standing allegation: Your father’s bones were never removed from the ground for a final burial, as is the tribal custom. She attributed the failure of Lenox’s three marriages to his having prevented his father’s entry into the eternal hunting ground.
Out of respect for the old lady, Lenox made do with gentle mockery: American—that’s what he was. If he were