“Suit yourself. How about we get out of the door way, though.”
Landsman steps aside, waving him into the room. Spade shuts the door.
“Detective Landsman. I have reason to believe,” Spade says, “that you have been conducting an unauthorized and, given the fact that you are currently under suspension—”
“With pay,” Landsman says.
“ — illegal investigation into a case that has been officially designated inactive. With help from Detective Berko Shemets, also unauthorized. And, taking a wild guess, well, I wouldn’t be surprised if you turned out to have been helping him, too, Inspector Gelbfish.”
“She has been nothing but a pain in the ass, actually,” Landsman says. “To be honest. No help at all.”
“I just called the AUSA’s office,” Bina says.
“Did you really?”
“They may be taking this one over.”
“For real?”
“It’s out of my jurisdiction. There’s been — there may have been — a threat. Against a foreign target. By District residents.”
“Huh-uh!” Spade looks at once scandalized and pleased. “A threat? Get out of town!”
A cold dense fluid fills Bina’s gaze, somewhere between mercury and sludge. “I’m trying to find a man named Alter Litvak,” she says, a great weariness dragging at the corners of her voice. “He may or may not be involved with this threat. In any case, I’d like to see what he knows about the murder of Mendel Shpilman.”
“Uh-huh,” Spade says amiably, a little distracted, maybe, like someone pretending to take an interest in the minutiae of your life while surfing some inner Internet of his mind. “Okay; but, see, the thing is, ma’am. Speaking as — What do you call it again? The man from the, uh, Burial Society who sits with the corpse when it’s a Jew?”
“They call that a shomer,” Bina says.
“Right. Speaking as the local shomer around here, I have to say: No. What you are going to do is to leave this mess, and Mr. Litvak, alone.”
Bina waits a long time before saying anything. The weariness of her voice seems to flow into her shoulders, her jaw, the lines of her face. “Are you mixed up in this, Spade?” she says.
“Me personally? No, ma’am. The transition team? Huh-uh. The Alaska Reversion Commission? No way. The truth is, I don’t know very much about this mess at all. And what I do know, I’m not at liberty to say. I’m in resource management, Inspector. That’s what I do. And I’m here to tell you, with all due respect, that enough of your resources have already been wasted on this matter.”
“They are my resources, Mr. Spade,” Bina says. “For two more months, I can talk to whatever witnesses I want to talk to. I can arrest whoever I want to arrest.”
“Not if the AUSA tells you to back off.” The telephone rings.
“That will be the AUSA,” Landsman says.
Bina picks up the phone. “Hello, Kathy,” she says. She listens for a minute, nodding, saying nothing. Then she says, “I understand,” and hangs up the phone. Her voice is calm and devoid of feeling. There’s a tight smile on her face, and she ducks her head in humility, as if she has been beaten fair and square. Landsman can feel that she is deliberately not looking at him, because if she looks at him, she might tear up. And he knows how outraged Bina Gelbfish has to get before there is any danger of tears.
“And I had everything fixed up so nice,” she says.
“And this place, let me tell you,” Landsman says. “Before you got here, it was a shambles.”
“I was just going to hand it all over to you,” she tells Spade. “All wrapped up. Free of crumbs. No loose strings.”
She worked it with such care, accumulated the credits, kissed the asses that needed to be kissed. Swept out the stables. Tied up Sitka Central and attached herself to the top like a decorative bow.
“I even got rid of that wretched love seat,” she says. “What the hell is going on here, Spade?”
“I honestly don’t know, ma’am. And even if I did know, I would say that I didn’t.”
“Your orders are to keep things smooth on this end.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“The other end being Palestine.”
“I don’t know much about Palestine,” Spade says. “I’m from Lubbock. My wife is from Nacogdoches, though, and that’s only about forty miles from Palestine.”
Bina looks blank for a moment, and then understanding seems to redden her cheeks like anger. “Don’t you stand there and make jokes,” she says. “Don’t you dare.”
“No, ma’am,” Spade says, and it’s his turn to go a little red.
“I take this job very seriously, Mr. Spade. And you had better, let me tell you, you had better fucking take me seriously.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Bina gets up from behind the desk and takes her orange parka from its hook. “I am going to bring in Alter Litvak. Question him. Possibly arrest him. You want to stop me, try to stop me.” Parka whuffing, she brushes past Spade, who’s caught off guard by the move. “But if you try to stop me, things will not be smooth on your end. I promise you that.”
And she’s gone for a second. Then she sticks her head back into the doorway, pulling on her dazzling orange coat.
“Hey, yid,” she tells Landsman. “I could use a little backup.”
Landsman puts on his hat and goes after her, nodding to Spade on his way out.
“Praise the Lord,” Landsman says.
38
The Moriah Institute is the sole occupant of the seventh and uppermost story of the Hotel Blackpool. There is fresh paint on the walls of the corridor and a spotless mauve carpet on the floor. At the far end, beside the door to 707, small black characters on a discreet brass plate spell out the name of the Institute in American and Yiddish, and beneath that, in roman characters: SOL AND DOROTHY ZIEGLER CENTER. Bina pushes a buzzer. She looks up into the lens of the security camera that looks down at them.
“You remember the deal,” Bina tells him. It’s not a question.
“I am to shut up.”
“That’s such a small part of it.”
“I am not even here. I don’t even exist.”
She buzzes again, and just as she raises her knuckles to knock, Buchbinder opens the door. He is wearing a different enormous sweater-jacket, this one in cornflower blue with flecks of pale green and salmon, over baggy chinos and a Bronfman U. sweatshirt. His face and hands are smudged with ink or grease.
“Inspector Gelbfish,” Bina says, showing him her badge. “Sitka Central. I’m looking for Alter Litvak. I have reason to believe he may be here.”
A dentist is not a man of guile, as a rule. Buchbinder’s face reads plainly and without concealment: He was expecting them.
“It is very late,” he tries. “Unless you—”
“Alter Litvak, Dr. Buchbinder. Is he here?” Landsman can see Buchbinder wrestling with the mechanics and trajectories, the wind shear of telling a lie.
“No. No, he is not.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“No. No, Inspector, I do not.”
“Uh-huh. Okay. Any chance you might be lying to me, Dr. Buchbinder?”
There is a brief, dense pause. Then he closes the door in their faces. Bina raps, her fist the relentless head and bill of a woodpecker. A moment later, Buchbinder opens the door, tucking his Shoyfer away into a pocket of his sweater. He nods, his cheeks, jowls, and the twinkle in his eye arranged to genial effect. Someone has decanted a small hopper of molten iron into his spine.
“Please come in,” he says. “Mr. Litvak will see you. He is upstairs.”
“Isn’t this the top floor?” Bina says. “There is a penthouse.”
“Fleabags don’t have penthouses,” Landsman says.
Bina shoots him a look. He’s supposed to be invisible, inaudible, a ghost.