Tom, the fisherman, stood with his back to me and said, "People have to find the way out by themselves." He was holding a bucket of squirming fish. "Don't look," he said. "It's not a pretty sight." Avihu was sitting near me looking totally indifferent. I stared at him in astonishment. "What's your story?" he whispered in his soft baritone. I was about to answer when one of the other sunbathers touched my shoulder. I tried to ignore her, but she wouldn't go away.
I opened my eyes and saw a dark-skinned girl leaning over me and shaking me gently awake. I guessed she must be Nissim's sister; she looked just like him and spoke in the same bored but polite tone.
"Nissim's always surprising me with a new guest," she said, her voice expressionless. "Are you leaving?"
"No, I'd like to stay here for a while."
"Then you're going to have to earn your keep."
She gave off a light scent of jasmine, but it only accented the chilliness she radiated. She left the room, making me feel wrinkled and dirty in the clothes I had slept in. I followed her.
"Will it be alright if I start in a couple of hours?"
"We got along without you so far, we can do it this morning too."
If I find Kate, I thought, you'll have to get along without me forever.
I started walking up Fifth Avenue. On the corner of 23rd St., I found what I was looking for. It was a three-star hotel called the Claremont. That was good enough for me. The reception clerk didn't show the slightest interest in me, made an imprint of the credit card I handed him, and gave me a key. The room was okay. I leafed through the telephone book. I dialed the number of Farber and Farber, a huge attorneys-at-law firm, and asked to speak with Kate.
"She doesn't work here anymore. Can I put you through to someone else?" The secretary in the Foreign Trade Department repeated the same words.
"I don't understand," I insisted. "This is the assistant manager of public relations for Macy's. Ms. Beaver won our store lottery, and gave your phone number. She won ten thousand dollars, but she has to pick it up personally. The phone in her apartment has been disconnected."
The secretary let out a screech. "Wow, really? I don't get it either. One day she didn't show up for work and the next day her brother called and said she had to go abroad unexpectedly and she was quitting her job here."
"Do you know his name? Do you know where I can reach him?" I scrunched up my face with intense anticipation. There was no response from the other end. I may have missed it. After a long pause, she came back.
"Actually, I don't. The whole thing is very strange. It's unlike her. But go figure. It's not for me to ask questions. Or answer them, for that matter."
"What about her due salary? Did she leave an address for you to send it to?"
"Her brother said she'd be back in a couple of months and come in and pick it up."
"Did he leave a name or address?"
"No."
"That's too bad. If she doesn't get in touch with us within a week, she'll forfeit the prize. Please call me if you hear from her." I gave her the number of Motti Pizza.
I got undressed and stepped into the shower. I stood under the steaming hot water for almost twenty minutes until I started to feel like myself again. I shaved carefully and put on a clean T-shirt and turtleneck sweater I bought on my way. I looked in the mirror and smiled at myself. I felt a whole lot better. The hotel clerk gave me back my credit card imprint without any argument when I told him I'd changed my mind and asked to pay only for the telephone call.
"Your card has expired."
"That's impossible. It still has eight months to go."
"Talk to American Express. They won't honor it. How should I know? Maybe it's stolen? Next time you'll have to pay cash up front. It's twenty dollars for a half hour. Now get out of here!"
*
When I got back to Motti Pizza, I found the blond from the night before filling the napkin dispensers. Her name was Sharon, the type you can find in any bar from Jerusalem to Boston. She had gray eyes and a shapely figure.
"Good to see you back. I told you you'll be back," she said when I came through the door. Obviously, she'd already been brought up to date on my new place of employment. "We need another man here besides Nissim. He's usually here only early in the morning and at night."
"Glad to be here," I said, refusing the stick of chewing gum she offered me.
She joked with all the customers and wasn't put off when they tried to test the sensitivity of her butt or asked her out after work. Aside from that, she didn't usually strike up conversations at her own initiative. Her heart, so I was told, belonged to a knight in shining armor called Charlie, although his real name was Chaim. One day Charlie vanished into thin air, together with his twin brother.
In the afternoon, during one of the few slow hours at the restaurant, she told me about her hero. I was in the storeroom trying to wash my dirty clothes, when I suddenly saw Sharon standing in the doorway.
"Dishwashing liquid," she explained, walking over to a dirty gray cabinet to get it. She stood there observing me with a look of incredulity and pity. "Poor guy," she said, pointing at my small pile of clothes. "You won't get very far with that wardrobe. We're going to have to get you some clothes. You know, Steve and Charlie are also what you might call sturdily built, like you." With obvious enjoyment, she measured the width of my shoulders.
That very night, she dragged me to her apartment on nearby Astor Place and opened a well-stocked closet. It held ten pairs of cowboy boots, and several formal suits and silk shirts.
"There are two sets of everything you see here," she boasted. "Steve and Charlie like to dress alike. They've played some good tricks on people, too, taking each other's place at critical moments." I could imagine what kind of tricks she was talking about.
"What happens if they come back?" I asked.
"Oh, they'll be back alright, but not so soon," she said with a sigh. "Take what you want, don't worry about it."
I wondered what the clothes of both men were doing in her apartment, but I kept my mouth shut. Finally, I took a few pairs of jeans, some Lacoste shirts, boots, and a brown leather jacket with a fur collar.
"Wow!" she blurted out when I tried it on. "Now you're a pilot too."
"Let's fly to Motti's," I said, offering her my arm. "I want to show them what I can do on my first day on the job."
On our way back to the restaurant I thought to myself that Motti Pizza must be a pretty lucrative business. I'd already seen that each part of the day had its own special customers. In the morning the students came, some of the boys dressed like businessmen looking ridiculously square and girls decked out in fancy clothes and heavy make-up. A few of the girls, some not even sixteen years old, showed up in panty hose with strategic holes in them, their faces painted red and white, looking very sexy and ready for anything, if only for the experience. The boys - sporting a cockscomb or shaved head, acne-pale faces, had chains around their neck and wrists. Later in the day, the real businessmen arrived, car salesmen, real-estate agents, and a good many of the diamond business. "International trade" was the catchword thrown around them. There were a lot of tourists, too - Germans, Japanese, Israelis. Kate was right; you could tell the Israelis from a mile away.
By the time I got back from Sharon's, repackaged in my new clothes, it was dark and the restaurant was very crowded. Nissim was back, along with Miller, Avihu, and the noisy redhead from the day before who was an ex-Israeli Air Force helicopter pilot by the name of Nadav. Almost the whole group from the night before was back. They greeted me like an old friend. Apparently friendships didn't go very deep there. Miller was trying to lure Avihu into another Central American adventure.
"There are at least twenty abandoned planes near the end of the runway. Get it? They buy a plane and fill it with dope. Sometimes they load so much that the plane can't take off and just crashes at the end of the runway. Then the pilot makes a run for it before the police show up and confiscate the cargo. But the plane stays where it i
s, no owner. A pilot like you and a good mechanic could get them out of there and make a killing."
Avihu looked amused. His soft baritone was clearly audible as he had the attention of everyone at the table. "I'm sure you're aware that the plane’s worth about twenty thousand dollars, and the cargo over three million. I'd go down there to help out a friend or to get in some diving, but not for the money. How about you, Nadav."
Avihu didn't really belong to the group. He was different from the others somehow. I guessed he must have had some reason, aside from the company, for spending his time there. Nadav seemed to be the only one he trusted, or at least listened to. Nadav opted to leave Avihu's question unanswered. "What happened to your fur deal?" he asked, biting into a dripping pita filled with shawarma, and managing quite successfully not to get the sauce on his shirt. He had a huge appetite.
From my place behind the counter, struggling with an enormous ball of dough and trying to cut it into equal squares, I could see Miller cast his eyes around suspiciously. No one else answered Nadav's question. He smiled.
"Went very well, too well... the Safran brothers handled it."
Sharon sat down on the nearest chair, her face pale. I had already noticed that whenever the Safran brothers were mentioned, she looked as if she were suddenly paralyzed. It was hard to pry the twins apart. When Nissim saw the clothes I was wearing, he told me that Sharon had agreed to go out with both of them just because of her total devotion to the one she really loved - Charlie. Only she could tell the difference between the two- but not separate them.
"You ought to make room in your heart for someone else, Sharon," Nissim counseled her gently. "He's not coming back; you know that as well as I do."
Sharon leapt to her feet. "No way!" she shouted. "He'll be back, they both will. You'll see. You'll all see!"
Avihu and Nadav exchanged a look.
Miller attempted to explain the twins' disappearance. "I don't know if it was really going too well or if it was too much for them to handle. You see, they were selling the furs to Venezuela. Not that there's much demand for furs in Venezuela, but the big money came from the processing. They have a special technique for producing coats from remnants." Miller's face broke into a broad smile. "And the money was even better when the shipments disappeared en route. Just a matter of good insurance, not to mention the profit from the sale of the stolen goods. The Safran brothers must have bitten off more than they could chew. They never came back from their last trip to Macao."
Nadav drummed his fingers nervously on the table. He was late for a business appointment, and Miller's explanation was too long for his taste. A stretch limousine was waiting outside for him, the driver lazily polishing the windshield. With his uniform and earring, the driver looked like a trained monkey. It wouldn't have surprised me if he started picking lice from his chest hair and putting them in his mouth.
Nadav was looking at me over at the counter.
"You were in security, weren't you?"
I returned his gaze with no words. I wasn't in the mood for a job interview. Certainly not his kind of jobs.
"I need someone to come along to this meeting," he went on. "It might require some security background." When he saw my lack of enthusiasm, he added, "It's a sweet job, less than an hour, and perfectly legal. A thousand bucks."
"I don't need the money," I said, picking up a rag and going in search of an empty table with crumbs that needed wiping off. I was not interested in another adventure. I didn't really know Nadav and who he was working for. On the other hand, in New York I could be invisible like everyone else. Nobody cared where you came from.
Avihu and Nissim were sitting at a corner table trying to decide what to order with their coffee. Nadav looked over at Avihu for help with a hint of desperation. Avihu was slow to respond. They seemed to understand each other without too many words.
"Why won't you help out a friend?" Avihu asked, wondering.
A friend? If he was my friend after five minutes, what would you call yourself, Avihu, after two months of intimate relationship with Kate?
"All you have to do is stand there," Nadav explained. "Don't say anything, even if they ask you how you are. If you should happen to accidentally drop a vase on the floor, that would be even better - but don't apologize. I'll do all the talking. If there's any trouble we’ll improvise, but there’ll be no need for that."
Nadav checked a small pouch tied to his ankle. It held precious gems, but was too small for any kind of weapon. With a certain degree of pride, he explained that he ran a one-man business with his attaché case and that little pouch. "I don't have any partners or board of directors to tell me what to do, and the only phone number I give out is connected to an answering machine."
I wondered who kept his books. He must have had an accountant, since he seemed to be doing very well.
"We can get along in the eatery without you for a while," Nissim chimed in, joining the company urging me to agree. I gave in.
My persuasive powers turned out to be highly effective. The man who owed Nadav money was a very apologetic religious Jew, accompanied by two strangely overgrown yeshiva students. They didn't bother me as much as an old Hispanic janitor type who hardly moved and looked like part of the furniture. The dealer explained how hard times were. He was trembling. His partner had just been killed by robbers, he muttered. The old Hispanic raised an interested eyebrow and then resumed his immobility.
They didn't try to talk to me and I didn't try to drop anything by accident. One of the yeshiva boys stayed behind the counter and didn't take his eyes off me, but I think they were just as impressed by Nadav's angry expression and red hair as they were by my silent presence.
Nadav got his money. They shook hands briskly and we hurried out of the shop. He looked relieved and happy, like a cheerful carrot, but still didn't offer any explanation. We went to a large, high-class Israeli restaurant nearby, the limousine keeping pace with us. It was the easiest thousand dollars I had ever made.
"Order whatever you want. My treat," Nadav said expansively. I didn't want to be too much in his debt. I ordered Saniya- chopped meat with tahini.
"I never use the same driver twice," he said, carefully wiping up the hummus he'd ordered with a piece of pita bread on the end of a fork. His clothes were impeccable and he gave off the scent of expensive cologne. "If you ask for the same driver again, he starts thinking he's your partner."
I said I thought he was overstating things a bit.
"You're in security. You know you can't trust anybody. That's why I'm so successful at what I do, and still in one piece," he added smugly.
We decided against dessert, settling for small cups of bitter Turkish coffee and the sweet baklava that came with them. "What about Avihu? Don't you trust him either?" I asked.
"Avihu is different." Nadav leaned back in his plush chair, his eyes veiled. "Rare species. You don't find people like him anymore. I can trust him with my eyes closed, and I'd do anything for him without hesitation. Did you know I was the helicopter pilot who flew him back from the field hospital at Balooza in the Yom Kippur War? He and his navigator bailed out over the swamp in the northern Sinai. The navigator didn't make it, but Avihu carried his body on his back for two days. Unbelievable. He was wounded himself, but he kept himself alive and even took out two Egyptian commandos that same night. When we finally got to him, he refused to come with us. They had to drug him. He was totally out of it for the whole flight back."
*
By the time I got back to Motti Pizza it was almost closing time, and they put me right to work. I went from table to table, scrubbing the cracked Formica and thinking of Avihu and Kate. It hurt to think about Kate, and I was unwilling to even consider returning to Boston, especially now that I'd undoubtedly lost my job at the consulate. It was after midnight. Most of the customers were gone, and even Avihu and Miller were about to leave. Miller swallowed the last of his coffee, stuffed Avihu's pizza leftovers into his mouth, and went off to another l
ate night appointment.
I decided to try my luck and sat down next to Avihu.
"I spent a whole week with Kate," I said.
He raised his eyebrows, intrigued.
"She might be nuts, but the whole story can't be a figment of her imagination."
"What story?" Avihu asked.
"You should know!" I wanted very much to vent my anger on him, but I only felt pity. He sounded like some programmed toy.
A cool breeze blew in from outside, bringing the sounds of a street fight out in the square. "Something about a spy network that got blown. Sound familiar?"
"One of you has seen too many movies," he responded in his deep voice.
"Benjamin?"
"I know more than one Benjamin."
"She said something about it being wiped out soon, and everyone involved being in danger. She sounded very scared."
By now, Avihu's expression was very grave. "What did you come here for?"
"She told me she used to meet people here, you in particular."
He looked at my hand clutching at his arm. I let go.
"Why don't you just forget about her?" he asked. "She's a lost cause."
My heart stopped. "What do you mean?"
"Look, David," Avihu explained patiently, choosing his words carefully and speaking in a tone of authority. I could easily imagine him in a flying suit, detailing a mission to the guys in the briefing room at some base in the desert before a sortie. "I don't quite understand how you got into this. After all, you're one of us. If you were really a security guard in Boston like they say, you should know what I mean. Kate was here and now she's gone. End of story. Sad, maybe, a shame, but there's nothing you can do. You can't help her and neither can I. It's the kind of thing where those who know the score don't ask, and those who ask don't know the score."