Festival of Deaths(36)

The cigarette was burned to the filter. Lotte dropped it on the ground, smashed it out with her foot, and took another from her case.

“That settles it then,” she told DeAnna. “He’s just the person we’re looking for.”

“I agree.”

“Now our only problem is convincing him he wants to interest himself in our problem. Did your person at CBS News indicate that this would be difficult?”

“I didn’t ask him if it would be difficult.”

“David says Father Tibor Kasparian says Mr. Demarkian is not always anxious to be involved. Ah, I wish he were coming to us instead of us going to him. I wish he were coming to New York.” Lotte took a deep drag on her newly lit cigarette. “I can’t help thinking it would be so much more convenient. We’ll ask him to help us and then what? All the evidence will still be here.”

“Maybe,” DeAnna said.

“Ms. Kroll?” the young man from the moving van called out. “What about sofas with marble arms? Do they get wrapped in cotton too?”

DeAnna looked up and shook her head. “Duty calls,” she said. “Are you going to be all right?”

“I’m going to be fine.”

“Go in the front and entertain the troops. Next year I’m going to rent a U-Haul and get Max to load it. You sure you’re all right?”

“Fine,” Lotte said again.

DeAnna turned away and started heading back to the moving van. “We’ll get Demarkian in on it and everything will be just fine,” she said. “You wait and see.”

Lotte Goldman sighed.

She didn’t know if getting Demarkian in on it would make everything “just fine,” but at least it would be doing something.





2


THE POLICE SHOWED UP at Itzaak Blechmann’s door ten minutes before he was intending to leave for the Hullboard-Dedmarsh building. They were the same two policemen who had come before, twice before, with their badges held out and their faces set like bad clay models in a kindergarten class. They reminded Itzaak of the policemen he had known in Leningrad. All policemen were the same, he told himself. All governments are the same. Law and order can mean only one thing: a license to commit terror.

When Itzaak saw the faces of the two policemen through his peephole, his stomach heaved so badly he thought he was going to throw up right there on the floor. He had to put his head against the doorjamb and close his eyes and count to ten before he could open up.

The taller of the two policemen was thick and ham faced and vaguely lewd, so that everything he said sounded obscene, even something as simple as “Can I have a glass of water?” The shorter of the two was mostly bald and called the taller one “Chickie.” Itzaak didn’t like the idea of a grown man people called “Chickie.” He wouldn’t have liked it even if the grown man had been a civilian. The idea of a policeman named “Chickie” made him start to sweat.

Itzaak had his two suitcases packed for the tour and piled next to the door. Chickie and the other cop looked at them as they came in. Itzaak had been getting his coat out when they buzzed. He still had it in his hand. He put it over the suitcase and then went into the living room, where the cops had already sat down.

The two of them always came in and sat right down, without asking. Itzaak had the idea that this was not permissible in the United States, but he didn’t know for sure, and he couldn’t see what he was able to do about it. The one called “Chickie” was sitting in his Barcalounger, his favorite chair in the world. The other one was sitting on the sofa.

Itzaak took a straight chair from his dining room table—his dining room was part of his kitchen; it was that kind of New York apartment—and sat down in it. The two cops looked at him as if he were a performing flea who had just done something terribly clever.

“Well,” Itzaak said. “Well. Here you are again.”

“That’s right, Mr. Blechmann,” the smaller cop said. “Here we are again.”

“I take it you’re not going to be here for long,” Chickie said. “Since you’re packed and everything.”

“I am leaving on the tour,” Itzaak said. “With the rest of The Lotte Goldman Show.”

“Ah,” the smaller cop said. “The Lotte Goldman Show.”

“My leaving has been cleared with the police department,” Itzaak said. “Just like the leaving of everyone else who works on the program.”

“Cleared,” Chickie said. “Oh, we know it’s been cleared.”

“I don’t know what you’re doing here,” Itzaak said.

The one called Chickie had been staring at the ceiling. The other one had been staring at the floor. Now they looked at each other and nodded a little. Chickie reached into the pocket of his jacket and brought out a stenographer’s notebook. His jacket was a badly cut brown tweed. Policemen here were like students in Leningrad in this one respect: their clothes always looked as if they had been modeled on creatures from another planet.