“Oh.” A piece of ham was caught in his fingers like a detached tongue. “That?” His eyes rolled to a corner of the room, searching for his nurse. “I can’t talk about that.”
“Why not?”
Schmidt frowned.
“Your grandpa would turn over in his grave.”
Sadie thought of the times she’d gone with her mother to synagogue for the High Holy Days, the way the Jews would rock forward and back while knocking their fists against their chests:For sins we have committed against you under duress or willingly…For the sins we have committed against you with knowledge and with deceit… For the sin we have committed against you by a bribe-taking or a bribe-giving.It was a prayer that could last for ten minutes—a plea for forgiveness for every possible transgression, and it was said repeatedly during Yom Kippur.
“Teshuvah,” Sadie remembered. “That’s how you say it, right?”
The wordTeshuvahimpacted the old man. He blinked, placed the tongue of ham back on his plate.
They waited in silence.
Jack tapped the table with his pointer finger, as if he were trying to make a more emphatic gesture but lacked the strength.
“There were some bad people in the game.” He glanced at Jason. “People thought I played dirty, but nothing like these guys.” He looked around, but no one was in earshot. “Your dad was in a fix, so I gave him their number.”
“There was a fire,” Sadie asserted. “People died.”
“Died?” Jack scowled. He looked like he was going to spit on his food. “No one died!”
“An older man. Three people were hospitalized for serious injuries. And everyone else lost all they had.”
“Load of shit. They would have emptied the building first.”
Jason rummaged through his bag, took out the folder, and handed Jack the petition from Lina Rodriguez Armstrong and the other Livonia Avenue tenants. “All these people were still living there. They refused to leave.”
Jack took the petition and squinted at it with his Steeplechase grin flipped completely upside down. Sadie took out her Olympus and hit the record button.
THE CHINS
Richard had not heard back from the Leviathans. He’d waited for months, dialing the number repeatedly, always getting a busy signal. He needed to sell the buildings—to get out of the loan. The loan shark was calling every day, threatening to take the East Flatbush house.
Richard looked up the Leviathans’ number in the white pages. He got it into his head that if he met the Leviathans, man-to-man, he might be able to convince them. Sometimes people heard the Chinese surname and misjudged him, but Richard could always win them over in person. The phone number matched an office in Sheepshead Bay. He drove down to Avenue Y one morning and scanned the streets until he located the right building, a small yellow townhouse with an office on the downstairs floor.
DR. EDWARD LIPSCHUTZ, PEDIATRIC DENTISTRY, the sign said. Undeterred, thinking perhaps this Edward Lipschutz shared the space with the Leviathans, he parked and rang the bell. Someone came to the door—a knockout of a girl, maybe in her twenties, in a miniskirt and heels. She let him into a small room with teddy bear wallpaper and a bunch of toys on the floor.
“Are you making an appointment for your child?” she asked, returning behind her desk, and immediately, he recognized her voice;it was the woman who’d answered his initial call to the Leviathans. She had a Russian or Polish accent.
“I’m here for the Leviathans,” he said. “About my properties.”
She looked at him sharply.
“Wait.”
He followed her swaying hips until they disappeared behind a door. A few minutes later she reemerged and led him to a small office at the back. Richard sat in a chair and looked around. On the left wall hung a 1943 air force medal with a plunging eagle engraved in the bronze. A tropical fish tank gurgled by the right wall, and above it hung a framed letter of gratitude from the local police precinct. He thought about what he should say to ingratiate himself. Maybe Mr. Leviathan had served in the air force.
Through the wall, he heard two male voices—he recognized the older, baritone voice.
“That guy who keeps calling?” said a younger man. “He showed up. Mila put him in the office.”
“That’s fine. I’ll speak with him.”
From the voice alone, Richard had decided that the old man was compassionate and would be sympathetic.
“Did we hear from Tuchman?” the older voice inquired.
