Through clenched jaws, Gilrein manages to say, “You’re making a mistake.”
But Kroger is already threading the suture through the eye of his needle.
“Mr. Gilrein,” he says, “the beauty of dealing with someone as insignificant as yourself is that I can’t make a mistake. There is nothing to be lost. You are no longer a policeman. You have no family. No powerful friends. You live in a barn, for God’s sake. An attic dweller. You don’t exist beyond your pathetic role as a driver. A deliveryman. Even your passengers forget you the moment they step out of the taxi. You are a shadow, Mr. Gilrein. I can do anything I want to you. And no one will care.”
He comes to stand directly in front of Gilrein, the needle and the spool of thread cupped in the palm of his hand, held out before him like an offering.
“I am going to ask you a final time. You have taken something which belongs to me. I intend to locate it. Now, Mr. Gilrein, you can either help me in this matter or you can waste my time. But if you do not answer me right now, right at this moment, I am going to be forced to teach you a very dear lesson.”
He lifts the threaded needle up to his mouth, dips the point just inside his lips and moistens the tip, withdraws the needle and lowers it down toward Gilrein’s face, as if it were a minuscule chalice.
“Do you have anything to tell me, Mr. Gilrein?”
Blumfeld loosens the choke. Gilrein sucks in air and frantically starts to shake his head, yelling, “I don’t know anything.”
Kroger closes his eyes briefly to indicate his disappointment, then looks to Blumfeld and nods. Blumfeld resecures his vise-hold on Gilrein’s head.
Kroger steps forward, runs a thumb over Gilrein’s lips and then his eyelids, saying, “As you see nothing, it appears you have no use for the eyes. And as you have nothing to tell me, it seems to me, you have no use for the mouth.”
Gilrein tries to scream but it’s as if his head is frozen in a block of ice. With one hand Kroger grabs the front of Gilrein’s face between the expanse of his thumb and forefinger, then, with his other hand, he takes the sewing needle and punctures the bottom lip at the right-hand corner and as blood begins to flow down the chin, the needle and its attendant thread are forced through the upper lip, which likewise begins to bleed.
“The eyes will be much worse,” Kroger says, calmly. “There’s no comparison. The lips are supple, plenty of give. But the eyelid, acht, you need to be extremely careful.”
Very likely, the process takes several minutes. But Gilrein’s perception is skewed from the moment the tip of the needle pierces the skin just below the rim of the lip. What he’s aware of through it all is the pain, the blood, the seizing up of the stomach, the tremblings and hidden conniptions exploding in pockets throughout the entire body, their epicenter located, it seems, one moment at the base of the jaw, perhaps half an inch below the earlobe, and the next moment in his temples, where he can feel his pulse revving beyond panic.
And there’s the strain in Blumfeld’s arms and chest as they struggle to prevent even the slightest movement. There’s the smell of Kroger’s breath — something like mustard or a strong, overripe cheese. There’s the sound, somewhere beyond it all, of movement and, at one point, maybe laughter.
The needle slides in and up, through the soft tissue of lip, breaking blood vessels and igniting a warm flow of liquid down the chin, off the chin and down onto the front of the shirt. The needle slides in again, through the upper, matching lip, pulling the suture along behind, binding the folds of pink flesh together, closing the aperture of the mouth, sealing the wound that holds the tongue, the muscle of speech, the organ of taste. The needle changes direction, follows the lead of Kroger’s hand, reverses course and now comes downward toward earth, back through virgin skin, cinching the hole at the base of the face, the repository of noise, the church of oral language.
And as the needle moves through its design, across the track of the mouth, left to right as well as up and down, Gilrein becomes aware that Kroger is making a humming noise, is murmuring the sound of some familiar song, as if he were back in Maisel, back in his father’s tailor shop, working on nothing more than the mundane cut of a new summer suit.
Then, at some point, it is done. Kroger leans his head back slightly without moving the rest of his body, studying the quality of his work. Pleased with the outcome, he brings his face forward, this time all the way to Gilrein’s cheek until Gilrein thinks the old man is going to kiss him. Instead, Kroger takes the finishing end of his thread between his teeth and bites it loose from the spool, which he repockets.
He stands, takes a step backward, places a fist on his left hip, brings his right index finger up to his face and scratches at his chin, then extends the arm down and runs the finger along the black tracks of the new stitching, blood swamping his finger, which he wipes on the front of Gilrein’s shirt.
Kroger nods to Blumfeld while still staring at the craftsmanship. Blumfeld releases his choke on Gilrein who sinks down in the chair, tries to swallow and fights a new, rising fear as the reality of his inability to spit out the blood pooling in his mouth dawns on him. He does the only thing he can do. He swallows all the heavy liquid collecting in the gully around his tongue and uses all his concentration to ward away a gag reflex. He starts to try to pull his lips apart and knows immediately he’ll rip them to shreds sooner than he’ll tear the fibers holding them together.
He looks up at Kroger, who has taken his glasses off and is polishing them with his handkerchief. “After all these years,” he says, almost dreamily, to the room in general. “Father would be so proud.”
Blumfeld’s hands come to rest lightly on Gilrein’s shoulders.
“I am going to need your complete attention now, Mr. Gilrein,” Kroger says, wiping the needle clean and securing it back in the case. “Please, try not to fade on me. I know this is difficult, but I’m sure you are up to it.”
He takes a much smaller needle from the case, studies it as he takes a second spool of thread from the satchel. This spool is much smaller and the fiber is shaded a deep red, almost a maroon.
To Blumfeld, in a more casual voice, Kroger says, “Father used to tell me, ‘The smaller the needle, the greater the skill of the craftsman.’ And I remember a saying among his fellow tailors— ‘He could stitch the anus of a church mouse.’ Of course, it was more lyrical in the mother tongue. Still,” now to Gilrein, in a louder voice, “wouldn’t that be an awful proposition, my friend?”
A volley of laughter from Raban at the other end of the room.
Kroger sets to threading the second needle.
“I am going to ask you again. One last attempt. In all fairness,” squatting down until he’s at eye level with Gilrein, “it is known that you were a chauffeur for Leo Tani. And it is known that on the last night of Mr. Tani’s life, you drove him to and from a meeting at Gompers Station. You were very likely the last person in the city to see Mr. Tani alive.”
Kroger brings a thumb up to his mouth and gives it a swipe with his tongue, then extends it to Gilrein’s left eye and brushes at the eyelid as if clearing away a smudge on a canvas.
“Leo Tani,” he continues, “was negotiating the sale of an extremely rare and valuable book. Mr. Tani had received an enormous amount of money from me in exchange for this book.”
A nod to Blumfeld. The vise-choke is reapplied around Gilrein’s head. Gilrein bucks up and Blumfeld applies most of his weight, forcing Gilrein back into the chair. Gilrein tries to speak, manages a series of garbled noises, muffled and blunted by his sealed mouth.