CHAPTER 34

FAREWELL

WHO WOULD HAVE IMAGINED the Outtaluck Café had a room for private meetings? But sure as the sea used to be full of fish, it did. That’s where Simone and I met the day after the Rebbe’s demise, at her request.

I arrived first at the underground cafe. I came prepared, bringing with me some loose ginger tea, two dainty Japanese teacups, and a teapot. My business with Simone was going to be hard, but I thought tea for old time’s sake suitable, at least civilized. The good Mortar, the barista with the tattoos, charged an arm and several legs for heating the water and a royal family’s ransom for the use of the room. But his was a struggling VU enterprise, which I was willing to support in my trifling way. My adventure, now near its end, had been costly, what with all of my expenses, with no client to give me my twenty-five a day plus expenses. But on the time-honored adage “in for a penny, in for around a hundred and fifty thousand bucks I don’t have,” I figured, what’s another couple of shekels along the bankruptcy highway? In fact, to keep things formal, I threw in a not inconsiderable additional sum for the barista to wait on us.

The meeting room was a small, dark space, with a couple of tables that would be suitable on top of a pile at Fresh Kills on Staten Island, where crap went to die. But they were here, and on one of them I unpacked Maggie and flicked off a crumb or two lying there from whenever this space had last been used.

“This place is a monument to gloom,” Maggie said.

The door opened and Mortar entered. “Your guest has arrived,” he said with a suaveness well out of place for the private meeting room at the Outtaluck.

“Send her in. And bring the tea.”

“As you wish,” he said. Room rental included manners, apparently.

In she walked, dressed in uniform, still beautiful, though her eyes were wounded, shrouded with guilt, her face downcast. She joined me at the table, sitting slowly, tentatively, unable to meet my eyes. I positioned Maggie so she could fully participate in our exchange.

Mortar returned carrying a tray, the tea brewing in the pot, and set it down. He’d included a couple of those dreadful chocolate chip cookies. He lingered, hands behind his back. There they remained until I pulled out a ten and handed it to him. He bowed at the waist, and went back to his various powders and no business.

Simone’s head faced down. We both knew I held the high card in this meeting, that the first words were mine. I poured the tea, but she showed no interest. Of course not. An absurd gesture, I realized.

“The Rebbe’s gone, and so is Schmeltzer’s money. Shmulie, too,” I said, placing the good news on the table before anything else. “You’re no longer in anyone’s debt. You’re free.”

“I know,” she said. “Yitzi’s in a panic, I hear. The whole organization’s in disarray.”

“A rat on a sinking ship,” said Maggie.

“What?” she said.

“Not important,” Maggie answered.

“It’s possible that his crazy money-making schemes might produce enough revenue to keep the operation alive,” I said.

“Yay!” said Maggie. “Pork for the masses. Gibberish forever.”

But it was time to get down to business.

Simone began sobbing. “What am I to do, Nick?”

“You killed a man,” I said. “You have to face up to it. I do know one thing.”

“Yes?”

I leaned back, slipped my hands into my pockets, and looked at her with difficulty. “We can’t have a relationship.”

“I know.”

I said it and I meant it. Every nerve ending in my body and every functioning synapse in my brain demanded instead that I embrace her, forgive her, move on as if she hadn’t murdered a man I knew and loved on orders.

The tea reminded me of old twigs. I put it down.

“I’ve decided not to say anything,” I said. “It’s on you to face what you did, to give yourself up. Abe Shimmer was a sick old man, and would have died soon anyway. Maybe that’ll count for something. Maybe your old relationship with the cops will help. But it’s up to you. If you want to just go on like nothing happened, I won’t say anything.”

She managed to raise her head and look me in the eye. Her eyes were red and her cheeks streaked with tears. “I guess we’re at the end, then, you and I. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe this. Probably this. What else could I expect?”

I said nothing.

My former student and lover stood up and, head down, slowly walked out of the room. She did not look back.