The Lovers

Ross traced his fingers over the picture of the symbol on the wall, then retrieved copies of four different photos from the various files on his desk. Soon, its surface was covered with variations on the same images: symbols burned into flesh, cut into wood, and carved on R Qd carved stone.

Ross turned his chair to the window and looked out over the city. As he did so, he dialed a number using a secure line. A woman answered.

“Let me speak to the rabbi, please,” said Ross.

Within seconds, Epstein was on the line.

“It’s Ross.”

“I was expecting your call.”

“You’ve heard, then?”

“I received a call last night to alert me.”

“Do you know where Parker is?”

“Mr. Gallagher gave him a bed for the night.”

“Is that common knowledge?”

“Not to the media. Mr. Gallagher had the foresight to remove his license plate when he realized that he might be forced to conduct a rescue.”

Ross was relieved. He knew that, in the absence of a New York lead, reporters had already attempted to track Parker through the bar in Maine in which he was working. A call to the field office in Portland requesting a drive-by at the Parker house had revealed two cars and a TV van parked outside, and the owner of the Great Lost Bear had told an agent that he’d been forced to put a no reporters sign on his door. To ensure that his request was complied with, he’d hired two large men in hastily made no reporters T-shirts to man the doors. According to the agent in question, those men had been waiting to start work when he’d visited the bar. They were, he said, without question two of the widest individuals he had ever seen in his life.

“And now?” asked Ross.

“Parker left the Gallagher house this morning,” said Epstein. “I have no idea where he is.”

“Have you spoken to Gallagher?”

“He says that he doesn’t know where Parker has gone, but he confirmed that Parker now knows everything.”

“Then he’s going to come looking for you.”

“I’m prepared for that.”

“I have some material I’m sending over to you. You might find it interesting.”

“What kind of material?”

“The symbol that was found on the dead women at Shell Bank Creek and Pearl River? I’ve got three more versions of it in front of me, one from two years ago, the others from earlier this year. There were apparent killings involved in each case.”

“She’s leaving signs, markers for the Other.”

“And now we’ve got her opposite number leaving his name in blood at Charlie Parker’s old house, so he’s doing the same.”

“Keep me informed, please.”

“I will.”

They exchanged farewells, and hung up. Ross summoned Brad back into his presence and told him to put a trace on Parker’s cell phone, and two men o R Qnd two men Rabbi Epstein.

“I want to know where Parker is before the end of the day,” he said.

“Do you want him brought in?”

“No, just make sure nothing happens to him,” said Ross.

“A little late for that, isn’t it, sir?” said Brad.

“Get the hell out of here,” said Ross, but he thought: from the mouths of babes…

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

I MADE THE CALL to Epstein from a pay phone on Second Avenue outside an Indian restaurant that was offering an all-you-can-eat buffet that nobody wanted to eat, so in an effort to drum up business a sad-faced man in a bright polyester shirt had been posted at the door to hand out flyers that nobody wanted to read. It was raining softly, and the flyers hung damply from his hand.

“I’ve been expecting your call,” said Epstein, once he had identified himself.

“For a long time, from what I hear,” I replied.

“I take it that you’d like to meet.”

“You take it right.”

“Come to the usual place. Make it late. Nine o’clock. I look forward to seeing you again.”

Then he hung up.

I was staying in an apartment at Twentieth and Second, just above a locksmith’s store. It extended over two decent-size rooms, with a separate kitchen that had never been used, and a bathroom that was just wide enough to accommodate a full rotation of the human body, as long as the body in question kept his arms at his sides. There was a bed, a couch, and a couple of easy chairs, and a TV with a DVD player but no cable. There was no phone, which was why I’d called Epstein from a pay phone. Even then, I’d stayed on the line for only the minimum time required to arrange our meeting. I had already taken the precaution of removing the battery from my cell phone, and had bought a temporary replacement from a drugstore.

I picked up some pastries from the bakery next door, then went back to the apartment. The landlord was sitting on a chair to the right of the living room window. He was cleaning a SIG pistol, which was not what landlords usually did in their tenants’ apartments, unless the landlord in question happened to be Louis.

“So?” he said.

“I’m meeting him tonight.”

“You want company?”

“A second shadow wouldn’t hurt.”

“Is that a racist remark?”

“I don’t know. You do minstrel songs?”

“Nope, but I brought you a gun.” He reached into a leather bag and tossed a small pistol on the couch.

I removed the gun from its holster. It was about seven inches long, and weighed, it seemed, less than two pounds.

“Kimber Ultra Ten Two,” said Louis. “Ten-shot box magazine. Rear corner of the butt is sharp, so watch it.”

I put the gun back in its holster and handed it to him.

“You’re kidding,” he said.

“No, I’m not. I want my license to carry back. I get caught with an unregistered firearm, and I’m done. They’ll flay me alive, then toss what’s left in the sea.”

Angel appeared from the kitchen. He had a pot of coffee in one hand.

“You think whoever killed Wallace tortured him to find out his taste in music?” he said. “He was cut so that he’d tell what he’d learned about you.”

“We don’t know that for sure.”

“Yeah, like we don’t know evolution for sure, or climate change, or gravity. He was killed in your old house, while investigating you, and then someone signed off on it in blood. Pretty soon, that someone is going to try to do to you what was done to Wallace.”

“That’s why Louis is going to stick with me tonight.”

“Yeah,” said Louis, “’cause if I get caught with a gun, then it’s okay. Black man always slides on gun charges.”

“I heard that,” said Angel. “I think it’s a self-defense thing: brother-on-brother crime.”

He took the bag of pastries, tore it open, and laid it on the small, scarred coffee table. Then he poured me a cup of coffee, and took a seat beside Louis as I told them everything I had learned from Jimmy Gallagher.

The Orensanz Center had not changed since I had last visited it some years earlier. It still dominated its section of Norfolk Street, between East Houston and Stanton, a neo-Gothic structure designed by Alexander Seltzer in the nineteenth century for the arriving German Jews, his vision inspired by the great cathedral of Cologne and the tenets of German romanticism. Then it was known as the Anshei Cheshed, the “People of Kindness,” before that congregation merged with Temple Emanuel, coinciding with the migration of the German Jews from Kleine Deutschland in Lower Manhattan to the Upper East Side. Their place was taken by Jews from eastern and southern Europe, and the neighborhood became a densely populated warren thronged by those who were still struggling to cope with this new world both socially and linguistically. Anshei Chesed became Anshei Slonim, after a town in Poland, and thus it remained until the 1960s, when the building began to fall into disrepair, only to be rescued by the sculptor Angel Orensanz and converted into a cultural and educational center.

I did not know what Rabbi Epstein’s co