The Ministry of Special Cases (17 page)

“I would have called,” he said, “but I think—I’m quite sure—they only make a house call once a night. I think—I believe, my dear Lillian—I think the police have already been.”

LILLIAN STOOD WITH HER FEET
planted in the corners of the doorframe, hands clamped to the sides. She was watching Kaddish in the hallway outside Cacho’s, her husband taking control.

Cacho, who was surely home at this hour, didn’t answer. For this Kaddish deemed him involved.

Kaddish had never had to calm Lillian physically before. In the apartment he’d peeled Lillian’s hands from his face. As if setting her loose, she’d stormed across the hall and again started banging, everyone in cahoots. Kaddish had hugged his arms around Lillian and moved her away. Then he’d replaced her.

Kaddish beat at that door, his swollen palms aching. Lillian said nothing. She stood in silhouette on their threshold while Kaddish backed up three steps and, charging, threw his shoulder against the door like the cops they saw on television. The door didn’t give on the first hit or the second, and then it opened with Cacho hidden behind. He snaked his head around to find Kaddish with a foot planted for a third charge.

Cacho opened the door wider. He was wearing the same pajamas he’d worn on the day of the coup. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “I was sleeping.”

Lillian was already pushing at Kaddish’s back. “Well, it’s good you
woke up,” she said. “Lucky. Because, you won’t believe it, but while you were sleeping Kaddish was breaking down your door. He was just this minute smashing it in so I could ask you a question.”

“It must be important, if he was so driven.”

“It is, it is,” Kaddish said. “Baking,” he said, squinting, studying Cacho’s face. “And, believe it or not, we’ve run out of eggs.”

“A cup of sugar,” Lillian said, and stepped to Kaddish’s side.

“You’re kidding, of course,” Cacho offered.

“Yes. Yes. We’re big jokers, me and the wife. A comedy team. What we want to know—” Again Kaddish was squinting, and then he pointed at Cacho’s face. A finger right up to his face. “Do you see that, Lillian? His eyebrow is bleeding.”

“That’s him,” she said. “I’ve seen it before. He scratches the eyebrows until there’s blood.”

“Well, then”—Kaddish lowered the finger—“what about the mouth? Both his lips have been split. Do you think he punches himself in the mouth as well?”

Lillian doubted this. “Not likely,” she said.

“That’s why I was asleep so early, sleeping so heavily as to miss the knocking. Because of the accident. I’ve had a fall and I’m not myself.”

“We understand,” Lillian said. “We’re no strangers to the recuperative. Kaddish is on his second set of black eyes.”

“I was about to mention,” Cacho said. “Both your noses have come out most lovely.”

“Can we come in?” Kaddish said.

Cacho came out instead. He sighed as he did, knowing he was bringing his splinted arm along with him. He’d duct-taped a wooden spoon underneath his wrist; against the top, the tape held a spatula in place.

“Quite a fall,” Lillian said. “To give you a fat lip as well as a broken—”

“Sprained at most.”

“As well as a sprained-at-most arm.”

“And the apartment a mess because of it, which is why I don’t invite you in.”

“We’ll have you over instead,” Kaddish said. He looked to Lillian for direction. He wasn’t exactly sure about roughhousing a neighbor who’d
been beaten and who hadn’t really done anything in the first place, a passive crime at best. Taking all that into consideration, and glancing at his wife, Kaddish took Cacho firmly by his splinted wrist. Cacho screamed and then whimpered steadily as Kaddish led him across to their living room.

Cacho sat on the couch.

“They took Pato,” Lillian said.

Cacho stared up in horror.

“No time for displays,” Lillian said. “Kaddish thinks it was the police who took him. We’re going down to the station to fetch him, and you can imagine how much it would help—”

“I was sleeping all night,” Cacho said.

Kaddish sat down on the couch on his neighbor’s bad side. “Did you dream any odd dreams, Cacho? Was there a nightmare where four men beat you for peeking out while they took my son away?”

“I didn’t dream that,” Cacho said. He looked up to Lillian, raising only his eyes.

“Dream it this minute,” she said. “Go put some clothes on and get rid of that ridiculous splint and come with us to talk to the police.”

“But I didn’t see anything.”

“I’ll tell you what you saw,” Lillian said. “You watched him grow up. You saw him from a little boy.”

“I slept. I didn’t dream. I didn’t hear. I didn’t see.”

“Everyone losing senses these days,” Kaddish said. He was truly disappointed. “When this is all over, it’ll be hard to see these handicaps undone.”

Cacho stood up to go. “It
is
everyone,” he said. “Not just me. Everyone is sleeping deeply.” He looked to Lillian, who looked away. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Kaddish said. He pulled Cacho back down to the couch. “If you have no reason to come to the police station with us, stay here and babysit Pato.”

“But he’s gone,” Cacho said. He cradled his arm.

“Then you’ll have an easy job of it. You can call us at the station if anything comes up.”

Cacho was desperate; his voice went high. “I don’t understand. Who am I babysitting if no one’s here?”

“How would you know that?” Lillian said. “Did you see?”

“I was sleeping, I told you.”

“Then you’ll have no trouble staying awake. And if you can’t, feel free, stretch out on the couch. Read a book until you nod off.”

Kaddish looked over his shoulder. “Don’t touch the books. Television. Watch the TV.”

“You can’t make me stay here. What if they come back? What if they decide they want you two as well? Whole families. First one, then the others.”

“Who’s coming back?” Kaddish said.

“I can’t do it.” Cacho stood up cautiously. Kaddish didn’t pull him back down. “I couldn’t have stopped them even if I saw.”

“We know that,” Kaddish said. “Nobody thinks you could.”

“A coward after all,” Lillian said.

“I am,” Cacho said, and his eyes turned narrow before—like a blink—returning to the width of his pleading. “But how did they get the boy past a man as tough as your husband?” He turned to Kaddish. “How did they get past you?”

“Go home,” Lillian said. “We won’t involve you, Cacho. Understood. We’ll make sure it’s stated clearly in the report: Cacho Barbieri is not involved. I’ll tell the police you asked specifically for it to be recorded that you were witness to nothing.”

“I’ll stay,” Cacho said. “It’s fine.”

Cacho sat. Kaddish blew his nose.

A threat from Lillian. Kaddish thought it as fine as any he’d given or received over the debt-filled high-stress bad-business years.

Lillian took a picture of Pato off the wall of family photos in the hallway. She put on her jacket and handed Kaddish his.

“I’ll be here,” Cacho said. “I’ll wait until you get back with your son.”

How many skinny boys work graveyard shifts on any given night? How many fathers approach these stringbeans knowing already that
uselessness is why they’ve been put on the job? This was Kaddish’s inspired observation as they entered Once’s police station. The first line of defense for any corrupt dysfunctional system is an ignoramus guarding the door.

Young officer Rangel answered only “Shorthanded,” when Lillian demanded a senior officer again and again. She showed him the picture of Pato and he swore he hadn’t booked a soul the whole night. “We’ve got two cars out on patrol, two at a fire, and the sergeant off doing sergeantly things. There’s no one here but the three of us.” The policeman had included Lillian and Kaddish in his count—such a polite young man. Lillian thought he could as easily have said
Just me
.

“Prove it,” Kaddish said, as if the burden was on Rangel.

“We really don’t do that, sir. Proving is frowned upon.”

“My son,” Lillian said.

He was new as could be, this officer, his judgment marred by inexperience. Rangel hiked up his pants and tightened his belt a notch. He took them to see the empty cells and, upon Lillian’s request, opened the broom closet too. He even let Lillian look into the sergeant’s office, putting out an arm to stop her when she tried to check under the desk.

“He’s not under the desk. I’ve been here a double shift.” He coaxed Lillian back to the civilian side of the counter to coincide with the sergeant’s return. The boy told the sergeant what he’d been trying to explain. The sergeant wiped his hand across a creased night-shift face and, taking the frame from Lillian said, “Something official. I don’t go by pictures off the wall. And we don’t go by nicknames either.
Pato
is for home, I want what you wrote on the birth certificate when he was born.”

“Pablo,” Kaddish said. “On that it says Pablo Poznan, but we’ve never once used it.”

“You’ll use it here.”

Kaddish produced Pato’s ID from his back pocket. Lillian thought he’d planned ahead.

The sergeant scratched under his chin. He considered the ID, worn on the ends, the laminate peeling away. He put a thumbnail in the space and peeled it farther apart.

“It’s against the law, this,” the sergeant told them. “It’s against the law to alter a government document in any way.”

“It’s not altered,” Lillian said.

“It has been tampered with.”

“You did that,” she said. “You made it worse just now with your thumb.”

“So you admit it’s partially tampered with but accuse me of exacerbating the situation by investigating.”

“She accuses you of nothing,” Kaddish said.

“That’s good,” the sergeant said. Caught up in the tension, the string-bean revealed a fine case of rosacea, turning a deep red on cheeks and ears and behind his eyebrows. It reminded Kaddish of his neighbor. A fiery patch lit across Rangel’s neck. “It’s good that you aren’t accusing. Or I might wonder why you have someone else’s official documents in the first place.”

“Because he’s our son,” Lillian said.

“It should be with him.”

“We should be with him,” Lillian said. “That’s why we came.”

“Well, you’ve come to the wrong place. This is a police station. We arrest those who commit crimes. Parents will not find innocent sons here.” A scratch to the chin, a look at his watch. “I apologize if peon Rangel didn’t make it clear, but your son isn’t in custody.”

“Thank you for your time,” Kaddish said. They were finished there. He put out his hand for the ID.

“I can’t return an altered document,” the sergeant said, “especially to an individual who isn’t the rightful owner. Send”—another glance at it—“send your Pablo to pick it up and explain its condition, and I’ll return it to him.”

Kaddish offered a second thank-you, like a curse under his breath.

Outside in the false dawn of streetlights, Lillian and Kaddish felt it simultaneously, though neither admitted it to the other. The sergeant had sent them out with their first shard of doubt. It reminded Kaddish of the fancy lady in the hospital with the splinter in her foot. Whenever he took a breath, tried to shift that doubt or bury it deeper, it was as the doctor had theorized. It splintered and splintered in endless directions.

THE PICTURE FRAME WAS VELVET-BACKED
and made both for hanging and standing. When Lillian extended its arm, a silk ribbon went taut, anchoring the frame on the officer’s desk. Lillian had placed it where a loved one’s photo would sit. In fact, she’d set it next to one of his own. After an interminable wait at the second station, Lillian and Kaddish had been seated in two chairs facing the officer at his desk.

The officer lifted the frame and the velvet arm fell forward against his fingers, a touch Lillian hoped familiar even if he studied an unfamiliar face. Then he raised his glasses and rested them on his head. Bringing the frame closer, he looked to Kaddish and then Lillian. She offered a warm smile.

Lillian believed deeply in the importance of these details. If she placed the picture in the right spot, he would reach for it and see the boy in a familiar way. If she was ready when he looked her way and smiled a warm smile during the worst moment she’d ever known, he would feel a bit of warmth toward her and in this way change their fate. He would walk off to some room and return with her son. The officer could stop it at the start. Lillian would hold no grudges and count this day as the happiest of her life.

The officer lowered his glasses and placed the picture face down. He took hold of the desk and rolled his chair closer until his stomach hit.
Kaddish and Lillian made the same motion. They wanted to meet this intimacy and better hear what he had to say. Except their chairs were not on rollers. Planted firmly, each made a subtle jerk forward and stopped dead.

“Maybe if you tell me again,” the officer said.

“We’ve told you twice already,” Kaddish said. Lillian pressed a hand to his knee and mustered another warm smile. The officer was unperturbed. “How many lady cops are there?” Kaddish said. “Call the one who released the boy into my care. I’ve already been here tonight.”

“What you’ve told me is that you were having a fight with your kid and then the mystery police snatched him. Your local station has no idea what you’re talking about so you figure, during a time of national crisis, that I sent my people across town to bust into your house and bring your son here. We’re twiddling our fucking thumbs waiting for high-schoolers to roust.”

“University,” Lillian said.

“All this you back up with an absent neighbor’s testimony.”

“It’s not my neighbor’s word alone,” Lillian said. “The police left their mark. He’s waiting at our house right now nursing his wounds. Let’s call him. You’ll see.”

The officer didn’t reach for the phone.

“Fast work by those police, stealing boys and beating neighbors all before you could get home from work.” The officer had taken some notes and he looked at his timeline. While he did this, he raised up the corner of his mouth, bearing teeth. “Yes? A matter of minutes for all that to get done. Efficient. Very efficient, those mystery police.”