After a quick shower and a change of clothes, Jack stuck Sister Maggie’s hundred-dollar bill into a padded envelope, addressed it to Cordova, and dropped it in a mailbox. Just in time to make the late pickup.
Then he stopped in at the Isher Sports Shop on the way to Gia’s. The front doorbell jangled as he pushed through. Jack wound his way toward the rear of the store through the tilting, ready-to-topple shelves overcrowded with basketballs, snowboards, baseball bats, even boxing gloves. He found Abe, proprietor and sole employee, out of his usual spot behind the rear counter and over by the rack of hockey sticks. He was talking to a young woman and a boy who looked maybe ten.
“All right,” Abe was saying to the boy in a testy tone. “Stand up straight already. Right. Unstoop those shoulders. No jaded slouch till you’re at least twelve—it’s a law. There. Now you should look straight ahead while I measure the stick.”
Abe with a sporting goods customer—usually a theater-of-the-absurd playlet. Jack stood back and watched the show.
Abe stood five-two or-three and was a little over sixty with a malnourished scalp and an overfed waistline. He wore his customary half-sleeve white shirt and black pants, each a sampling menu of whatever he’d eaten during the course of the day. This being the end of the day, the menu was extensive.
He grabbed a handful of hockey sticks and stood them one at a time in front of the kid. The end of the handle of the first came up to the level of the kid’s eyes.
“Nope. Too long. Just the right length it should be, otherwise you’ll look like a kalyekeh out there on the ice.”
The kid looked at his mom who shrugged. Neither had the faintest idea what Abe was rambling about. Jack was right with them.
The second stick reached the kid’s chin.
“Too short. A good match this would be if you were in your skates, but in shoes, no.”
The end of the third stick stopped right under the kid’s nose.
“Perfect! And it’s made of graphite. Such tensile strength. With this you can beat your opponents senseless and never have to worry about breaking it.”
The kid’s eyes widened. “Really?”
The mother repeated the word but with narrowed eyes and a different tone.
Abe shrugged. “What can I say? It’s no longer a sport, hockey. You’re equipping your kaddishel to join a tumel on ice. Why put the little fellow in harm’s way?”
The mother’s lips tightened into a line. “Can we just pay for this and go?”
“I should stop you from paying?” he said, heading for the scarred counter where the cash register sat. “Of course you can pay.”
Her credit card was scanned, approved, a slip was signed, and she was on her way. If her expression hinted that she’d never be back, her comment left no doubt.
“Get out while you can,” she muttered to Jack as she passed. “This guy is a loon.”
“Really?” Jack said.
Abe had settled himself onto his stool and assumed his customary hands-on-thighs posture as Jack reached the counter. Parabellum, his blue parakeet and constant companion, sat in his cage to the right pecking at something that looked like a birdseed popsicle.
“Another highwater mark in Abe Grossman customer relations,” Jack said, grinning. “You ever consider advertising yourself as a consultant?”
“Feh,” Abe said with a dismissive gesture. “Hockey.”
“At least you actually sold something related to a sport.”
The street-level sports shop would have folded long ago if not for Abe’s real business, locked away in the cellar. He didn’t need sports-minded customers, so he did what he could to discourage them.
“Not such a sport. Do you know they’re making hockey sticks out of Kevlar now? They’re expecting to maybe add handguns to the brawls?”
“Wouldn’t know,” Jack said. “Never watch. Just stopped by to let you know I won’t be needing that transponder I ordered.”
“Nu?” Abe’s eyebrows lifted toward the memory of his hairline. “So you’re maybe not such a customer relations maven yourself?”
“No, she’s still onboard. It’s just that I’ve already dealt with the guy who’s squeezing her. He’s the one the last transponder led me to.”
“Cor-bon or something, right?”
“Close. Cordova. Some coincidence, huh?” He waited for Abe’s reaction.
“Coincidence…” His eyes narrowed. “You told me no more coincidences for you.”
Jack hid his discomfort. “Yeah, I know, but coincidences do happen in real life, right?”
Abe shrugged. “Now and then.”
“Watch: I’ll probably find out he’s a closet Dormentalist.”
“Dormentalist? He’s a rat, maybe, but is he meshugge?”
Jack told him about Maria Roselli and her missing Johnny, then asked, “You know anything about Dormentalism?”
“Some. Like a magnet it attracts the farblondzhet in the head. That’s why the Dormentalists joined the Scientologists in the war against Prozac back in the eighties. Anything that relieves depression and allows a clearer view of life and the world is a threat to them. Shrinks the pool of potential members.”
“I need to do a little studying up. What’s the best place to start, you think? The Web?”
“Too much tsuris separating fact from opinion there. Go to the source.”
He slid off the stool and stepped into the little office behind the counter area. Jack had been in there a few times. It made the rest of the store look neat and spare and orderly. He heard mutters and clatters and thuds and Yiddish curses before Abe reemerged.
“Here,” he said as he slapped a slim hardcover on the counter. “What you need is The Book of Hokano, the Torah of Dormentalism. More than you’ll ever wish or need to know. But this isn’t it. Instead, it’s a mystery novel, starring a recurring hero named David Daine, supposedly written by Dormentalism’s founder, Cooper Blascoe.”
Jack picked it up. The dust jacket cover graphic was a black-and-white melange of disjointed pieces with the title Sundered Lives in blazing red.
“Never heard of it.”
Abe’s eyebrows rose again in search of the Lost City of Hair. “You should have. It was number one on the Times’ bestseller list. I bought it out of curiosity.” He rolled his eyes. “Oy, such a waste of good money and paper. How such a piece of turgid drek could be a bestseller, let alone make number one, makes me dizzy in the head. He wrote six of them, all number ones. Makes one wonder about the public’s reading tastes.”
“Whodunnit?”
“I have no idea. Couldn’t finish it. Tried once to read The Book of Hokano and couldn’t finish that either. Incoherent mumbo jumbo.” He pointed to the book in Jack’s hand. “My gift to you.”
“A bad novel. Gee, thanks. You think I should buy The Book of Hokano then?”
“If you do it should be used already. Don’t give those gonifs another royalty. And set aside a long time. A thousand or so pages it runs.”
Jack winced. “Do they have Cliff Notes for it?”
“You might find something like that online. All sorts of nuts online.”
“Still, millions of people seem to believe in it.”
“Feh! Millions, shmillions. That’s what they say. It’s a fraction of that, I’ll bet.”
“Well, it’s soon going to be a fraction plus one. I’m a-goin’ to church.”
“You mean you’re joining a cult.”
“They call themselves a church. The government agrees.”
Abe snorted. “Church smurch. We should listen to the government? Dormentalists give up control to their leaders; all decisions are made for them—how to think, what to believe, where to live, how to dress, what country even! With no responsibility there’s no guilt, no outcome anxiety, so they feel a mindless sort of peace. That’s a cult, and a cult is a cult no matter what the government says. If the Department of Agriculture called a bagel an apple, would that make it an apple? No. It would still be a bagel.”
“But what do they believe?”
“Get yourself The Book of Hokano and read, bubbie, read. And trust me, with that in front of you, insomnia will be no worry.”
“Yeah, well, I’ll sleep even better if you find me a way to become a citizen again.”
Impending fatherhood was doing a number on Jack’s lifestyle, making him look for a way to return to aboveground life without attracting too much official attention. It wouldn’t have been easy pre-9/11, but now…sheesh. If he couldn’t provide a damn good explanation of his whereabouts for the last fifteen years, and why he wasn’t on the Social Security roles or in the IRS data banks as ever filing a 1040, he’d be put under the Homeland Security microscope. He doubted his past could withstand that kind of scrutiny, and he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life under observation.
Had to find another way. And the best idea seemed to be a new identity…become someone with a past.
“Any more from your guy in Europe?”
Abe had contacts all over the world. Someone in Eastern Europe had said he might be able to work out something—for a price, of course.
Abe shook his head. “Nothing definite. He’s still working on it. Trust me, when I know, you’ll know.”
“Can’t wait forever, Abe. The baby’s due mid-March.”
“I’ll try to hurry him. I’m doing my best. You should know that.”
Jack sighed. “Yeah. I do.”
But the waiting, the dependence on a faceless contact, the frustration of not being able to fix this on his own…it ate at him.
He held up the book. “Got a bag?”
“What? Afraid people will think you’re a Dormentalist?”
“You got it.”