He smiled conspiratorially.
“But I also hear that you may have some competition in trying to finish off Pudd. It seems that some old Jews have got tired of torchings and killings, and that the death of the rabbi in New York this week was the last straw. I tell you, don't mess with the fucking Jews. Maybe it ain't like the days of Bugsy Siegel no more but those people, they know how to bear a grudge. You think the fucking Sicilians are bad? The Jews, they've had thousands of years of experience of bearing grudges. They are to grudges what the Chinese are to gunpowder. These fucking people invented the grudge, excuse my language.”
“They've hired someone?” I asked.
Al Z shook his head. “Money isn't the prime motivator where this man is concerned. He calls himself the Golem. He's Eastern European-Jewish, naturally. Never met him, which is probably a good thing. Way I understand it, anyone who meets him winds up dead. The day I see him, I'm gonna be kissing St. Peter's ring and apologizing for having an attack of selective amnesia where the Ten Commandments were concerned.”
He twisted at his wedding ring again, the light from the window reflecting on it and sending tiny golden spears shooting across the wall.
“The guy you want to talk to is Mickey Shine, Michael Sheinberg. We called him Mickey the Jew. He's retired now, but he used to be part of Joey Barboza's crew until Joey started ratting people out. I heard that maybe he was the one killed Joey in San Francisco in seventy-six. He ended up working for Action Jackson for a time, then got tired of the whole racket and bought a flower shop in Cambridge.” He took a pen and scribbled an address on a piece of paper, tore it from the pad, and handed it to me.
“Mickey Shine,” he said. His eyes were distant and there was a sepia tint of nostalgia to his voice. “You know, we went drinking, summer of sixty-eight, started out in Alphabet City, and I don't remember anything else until I woke up in this Turkish bath wearing only a towel. I was lying on a slab, surrounded by tiles. I swear, I thought I was in the fucking morgue. Mickey Shine. When you talk to him, you tell him I remember that night.”
“I will,” I said.
“I'll ask someone to call ahead,” said Al Z. “Barboza was hit four times with a shotgun. You go waltzing in there with a gun at your shoulder asking about Mickey Shine's past, you're likely to find out how Barboza felt, if you get my meaning.”
I thanked him, then stood up to leave. By the time I reached the door, he had resumed his seat at his desk, his hand still toying with the gold band.
“We're two of a kind, you and I,” he repeated as I paused at the door.
“What kind is that?”
“You know what kind,” he replied.
“One good act,” I said gently, but I wasn't sure that would be enough. Al Z's business was based on drugs and whores, porn and theft, intimidation and wasted, blighted lives. If you believe in karma, then those things add up. If you believe in God, then maybe you shouldn't be doing those things in the first place.
I, too, had done things that I regretted. I had taken lives. I had killed an unarmed man with my bare hands. Maybe Al Z was right: perhaps we were two of a kind, he and I.
Al Z smiled. “As you say, one good act. I will help you, in this small way, to find Mr. Pudd and put an end to him and those around him. You step lightly, Charlie Parker. There are still people listening for you.”
When I left, he had resumed his seat and his hands were once again steepled beneath his chin, his face hovering over them like that of some malicious, pitiless god.
11
MICKEY SHINE WAS ABOUT FIVE-SIX and bald, with a silver ponytail and a silver beard, both of which were designed to distract from the fact that he didn't have more than six hairs above the level of his ears. Unfortunately, when your name is Mickey Shine and the bright lights of your store reflect the dazzling brilliance of your skull, then cultivating a goatee and opting to grow your hair long at the back aren't exactly fail-safe options in the distraction stakes.
“You ever hear the joke about the two legionnaires walking through the desert?” I asked him, as the jangling of the bell above the door on Kendall Square faded away. “One turns to the other and says, ‘Y'know, if her name hadn't been Sandra I'd have forgotten her by now.’ ”
Mickey Shine looked at me blankly.
“Sand,” I said. “Sand-ra.”
“You want to buy something already?” asked Mickey Shine. “Or did somebody send you here to brighten up my day?”
“I guess I'm here to brighten your day,ὕ I said. “Did it work?”
“Do I looked brightened up?”
“I guess not. Al Z gave me your name.”
“I know. A guy called. He didn't say nothing about you being a comedian, though. You want to lock the door, turn the sign to Closed?”
I did as I was asked, and followed Mickey Shine into the back of the store. There was a wooden table with a cork bulletin board above it. On the board were pinned the floral orders for that afternoon. Mickey Shine began pulling orchids from a black bucket and laying them out on a sheet of clear plastic.
“You want I should stop?” asked Mickey. “I got orders, but you want I should stop, I'll stop.”
“No,” I replied. “It's okay.”
“Help yourself to coffee,” he said. There was a Mr. Coffee machine on a shelf, beside a bowl filled with nondairy creamer and packets of sugar. The coffee smelled like something had crawled into the pot to die, then spent its final minutes percolating.
“You're here about Pudd?” he asked. He seemed intent upon the orchids, but his hands faltered as he said the name.
“Yes.”
“So it's time, then,” he said, more to himself than to me. He continued arranging the flowers in silence for a few minutes, then sighed and abandoned the task. His hands were shaking. He looked at them, held them up so I could see them, then thrust them into his pockets, the orchids now forgotten.
“He's a foul man, Mr. Parker,” he began. “I have thought much about him in the last five years, about his eyes and his hands. His hands,” he repeated softly, and shuddered. “When I think of him, I imagine his body as a frame, a hollow thing to carry around the evil spirit that resides inside. Maybe this sounds like madness to you?”
I shook my head and recalled my first impression of Mr. Pudd, the way his eyes peered out from behind their hoods of flesh, the strange, unconnected movements of his fingers, the hair below the joints. I knew exactly what Mickey Shine meant.
“I think, Mr. Parker, he is dybbuk. You know dybbuk?”
“I'm sorry, I don't.”
“A dybbuk is the spirit of a dead man that enters the body of another living being and possesses it. This Mr. Pudd, he is dybbuk: an evil spirit, base and less than human.”
“How do you know of him?”
“I took a contract, is how I know. It was after I left, when the old ways started to fall apart. I was a Jew, and Jews do not make the book, Mr. Parker. I was not a made man, so I thought I would walk away, let them fight to the death like animals. I did one last favor, then left them to die.” He risked a glance at me, and I knew that Al Z had been correct; it was Mickey Shine who had pulled the trigger on Barboza in San Francisco in 1976, the last favor that allowed him to walk away.
“I bought my store, and things were good until about eighty-six. Then I got sick and had to close up for a year. New stores opened, I lost customers, and so and so…” He puffed up his cheeks and let his breath out in one loud, long exhalation.