The Righteous Men (2006) (24 page)

The cell phone beeped.

He that knows nothing doubts nothing

This time Will read it out loud. He knew the answer to his next question,
but he asked it anyway: ‘Did you work out the first one, “He who
hesitates is lost”?’

‘Not yet.
He that knows nothing doubts nothing
. What could that
mean?’ TC was pencilling the words down, in the corner of a page already
marked with drawings.

‘I don’t get it,’ Will said, chiefly for the sake of
saying something. ‘It’s a contradiction. In the first message, he’s
telling us not to hesitate. Just to get on with it. Now he’s saying that
it’s good to doubt. You know, only a moron doesn’t experience doubt.’

‘Doubting’s not the same as hesitating.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘I don’t fucking know. I’m trying to think. He wants to
tell us something. You know, “move it”. Or “think things through”.
I don’t know. But he sounds like he wants to help.’

‘No. If he was trying to help he wouldn’t be talking in fucking
riddles.’ Another beep.

Opportunity seldom knocks twice

As soon as Will read it out, TC began murmuring. ‘Twice is
interesting. Perhaps he’s telling us to multiply something.

Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong. Maybe he wants us to look at
the letters as numbers!’

‘What?’

‘You know, like the way text messages work, only reversed. They’re
letters and words formed from numbers. Maybe this is the reverse. We’re
meant to take the letters and think of them as numbers.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Well, one thing could be to count the number of letters in each clue.
That number could be significant. Or perhaps each letter has a numeric value.
You know, A is one, B is two.’

Will was baffled, but TC was ignoring him. She was scribbling away
frantically on her sketchpad, wildly computing one sum after another.

More beeping; perhaps a minute after the previous one.

A friend in need is a friend indeed

Will was becoming more irritated with each message. If this was help, why
did it have to be so damned opaque? Will felt like shaking young Yosef Yitzhok
by his lapels:
If you want to help, then just help!
‘What is this,
Cliché Night?
A friend in need is a friend indeed
. What the hell is
that? How on earth does he expect us to solve these so fast?’

‘Look, cool down Will. Right now this is all we have. He’s all
we have. Maybe he’s suddenly in a place where he can text without being
seen; he might want to get all his messages out while he can.’

It was plausible; Will bit his lip. He did not want to set off a whole row
with TC now, not while she was concentrating so hard on her role as unofficial
cryptographer.

Will began to pace around, letting his pores fill up with the fat and grease
of a burger joint — which this place was, even if it did now sell salads.
He strode into a seating area where a single TV monitor was playing. Set to NY
1, the local news channel, it now flashed pictures of the Bangkok arrest of a
Brooklyn rabbi on murder charges. The suspect was in the trademark garb —
beard, white shirt, black suit, trilby hat — as he was handcuffed and led
away by two young and scowling Thai policemen. His face seemed to be
determinedly aimed downward, in shame or to avoid recognition, Will could not
tell. Altogether, the sight could not have been more incongruous. That sequence
was followed by footage of NYPD officers arriving on foot in Crown Heights,
eschewing their usual squad cars in a gesture of ‘sensitivity’
apparently ordered by the mayor’s office.

Those pictures renewed an argument Will and TC staged several times that
long afternoon.

‘I should go back there, right now.’

‘And do what? Get dunked again?’

‘No. I would tell them what I, what you, wrote in that email. That I
know what they’re up to and that they should cut a deal.’

‘Too risky., You might say just the wrong thing and escalate the whole
situation. The virtue of email was that we could control exactly what was said.’
Was said, the cowardly passive again. TC was obviously reluctant to admit that
she had put those words in Will’s mouth.

‘I can’t just leave Beth there. Who knows what they might do now
that they’re under siege. They might panic. One of those thugs could
tighten the screw a bit too hard, or keep her head in water ten seconds too
long—’

‘You’re doing it again. Getting into a panic. I told you, this is
like climbing a mountain: you mustn’t look down. You mustn’t think
about any of that. Besides, the place is crawling with police today: they
wouldn’t dare do anything while they’re around. The whole vibe of
those text messages from Yosef Yitzhok is that everything’s still to play
for. Nothing has changed, nothing terrible has happened.’

‘Except you don’t think they’re from Yosef Yitzhok.’

‘I’m not sure, that’s all.’

That’s how it went, several times over, ending inconclusively with
both TC and Will falling into a sullen or drained silence. Afterwards, Will
would reflect on the fact that Beth and he never bickered. They argued but
never bickered; he and TC had turned it into an Olympic sport.

Interruption came whenever a message landed. These texts, which once made
Will’s chest pound with nervous anticipation, were becoming routine. Even
boring. Will clicked to see the latest.

To the victor the spoils

That sounded menacing, as if the Hassidim were registering a claim on Beth:
if
we win, we will keep her
. Will felt his hatred rising. ‘Now they’re
threatening us.’

‘To the victor the spoils,’ TC repeated slowly once Will had read
it out, as if she were taking dictation.

Will glimpsed what looked like a grid on TC’s sketch pad, neatly
filled in with each new line from YY. ‘What have you got?’

‘The numbers things didn’t work out, so I’ve been looking at
anagrams for each one. And I can get something but nothing that hangs together.
There’s no pattern. I’ve tried running it as an acrostic—’

‘A what?’

‘An acrostic. Where the first letter of each sentence provides a
letter of the hidden word. You know, “Roses are red” gives you R, “Violets
are blue” gives you V. There are some psalms laid out like that. Put
together the first letter of each line and you get another line of prayer. It
was a trick: a twelve-line poem with an invisible thirteenth line.’

‘I get it. So what do we get if we do that?’

‘So far? We have H, H, O, A, T. If we skip the indefinite article
— so it’s “Friend in need” not “A friend in need”
— we get H, H, O, F, T. Not much better.’

‘What the hell is he playing at? Hang on.’ Another one was
coming through.

Goodness is better than beauty

Will was beginning to feel swamped. TC was having to think like a
grandmaster at one of those chess exhibitions, moving around the room, playing
a hundred games on a hundred different boards at once. It had taken a long time
to decode just one message. Now she had six.

‘Look, Will. There’s no way to work out what this is till it stops.
Whenever I try one theory, it’s blown out by the next message. We need to
have the full set and then see what this guy’s trying to say.’

‘YY.’

‘If it’s him, yes.’

‘Who the fuck else could it be?’

‘Leave me alone, Will.’

He couldn’t blame her for being exasperated. He knew he was being
insufferable, taking out his rage, grief and sheer fatigue on her. She didn’t
have to take this from him. She could walk away — and he would be
stranded.

He wanted to say sorry, but it was too late. She had turned her back on him,
wisely preventing any escalation in hostilities.

Pity neither of them had ever been so shrewd when they were lovers.

No more than two minutes later, another message arrived:

A man is known by the company he
keeps

Was this some way of urging Will to think about the people around the rabbi
who had interrogated him last night? Forget about him, start thinking about his
henchmen. Was that what this clue was trying to say?

And then, perhaps thirty seconds later:

From little acorns mighty oaks grow

Christ, this guy was annoying. What was this, some oblique reference to
fathers and sons? The effort he was putting into these messages, hammering out
long texts when all he had to do was send a few, simple words: the address
where Beth was held. The ire was rising through Will’s body, reaching the
veins in his neck.

He had not even shown TC the latest message when he began texting back:

Enough of these horseshit games. You
know what I need.

The instant he had sent it, Will regretted it. What if he scared Yosef
Yitzhok off? TC was right: he was all they had.

Worse, what if Will’s message was somehow intercepted by the Crown Heights
hardliners, who would instantly realize what YY was up to, that he was in
communication with the enemy, and punish him? Will imagined YY in an alleyway, just
off Eastern Parkway, huddled over his cell phone, maybe using his prayer shawl
as a canopy, when two men grab him from behind, snatch away his phone and drag
him off for an impromptu meeting with the rabbi.

And yet, Will felt a release of cathartic energy flow through him. He could
not stand the passivity of his situation, sitting there, hands outstretched,
waiting for clues to fall like crumbs from the Hassidim’s table. It felt
good to fight back.

Finally, the sky began to darken. Will started pacing, his right hand
gripping the BlackBerry, turning it clammy. At 7.42pm exactly TC nodded,
telling him that the Sabbath had now ended. Will glanced down immediately,
expecting a red light to flicker on within seconds. No, no, advised TC: they should
give it at least thirty minutes before expecting a reply. There were things to
do after the sabbath, including the
Havdalah
ceremony which used wine,
spices and a plaited candle to bid a final farewell to the day of rest. Then
there was the walk back from synagogue to make
Havdalah
at home. Most
men would probably want to freshen up after that. Even if the Hassidim read
Will’s message on a computer in a home or office, they would not want to
reply from there: too traceable. Not by Will of course, but by the police in
some future investigation. So they would have to go back to the Internet Hot
Spot — all of which could take at least an hour. Even this scenario was
optimistic, TC warned. Will knew he had sent them an email, but they did not.
They were not expecting one, so why would they rush to check?

On the other hand, maybe today was different. Crown Heights was crawling
with detectives investigating a murder under instruction from Interpol. The
rabbi who had grilled Will would not be able to stick to his usual ritual. He
would be answering questions and they would not be about the correct dimensions
of a Talmudic stove. He would be under interrogation — and under
pressure. (The thought of that role reversal pleased Will.) If that was the
atmosphere, Will reckoned they would have a hundred reasons to check email as soon
as they could. Even if they were not waiting for word from him, they would need
to communicate with their people in Bangkok. Will guessed they would be
powering up their laptops the moment it was theologically decent.

At eight o’clock Will’s hunch was confirmed. Twenty minutes
after sundown, the red light on his BlackBerry blinked. Will clicked the track
wheel and saw that same, hieroglyphic script, the characters he now knew to be
Hebrew. Re:
Beth
.

You are out of your depth. Do not
drown.

H
e had no time for a seminar
with TC. He replied instantly, his thumbs working furiously.

I could call the police right now. What do I have to lose?

He waited, while TC sat opposite him, curled into a ball, rocking herself
backward and forward. Will wondered if he had ever seen her in this position,
so nervous she was foetal.

The crowd at McDonalds had changed. The bums and homeless mutterers now
mostly replaced by twenty-something men about to fuel up before a night hitting
the bars. The red light came on.

You have everything to lose. You could lose her.

Again, Will did not wait. This, he realized, was what he had wanted since
that first message: a direct confrontation with the kidnappers. When they had
met last night, Will was pretending to be someone else. He had had to be
polite. Now it was out in the open, he could take them on.

You touch her and you will be guilty of two murders. My evidence will
send you down. Release her or I start nailing you.

The delay was longer this time, excruciating. The red light flashed, Will
pouncing on the little blue machine.

Low price pharmacy for all your medical needs. We deliver
. Spam.

More minutes and then:

Call now on 718-943-7770. Do not use a recording device. We will know if
you try.

Will imagined how this was working at the other end. Doubtless, one of the
monkeys, Moshe Menachem or Tzvi Yehuda, was at the Internet Hot Spot, reading
and typing the emails, taking direct instruction from the boss on the end of a
phone. Now the boss had something to say that he did not want committed to
email, even one as disguised as this.
Good
, thought Will, sensing his
opponent was weakening a little. He looked at TC: having consumed her nails,
she was now gnawing at her cuticles.

He pulled out his cell phone, dialling the number slowly, as if he was
performing surgery. His hands were trembling. He realized that this man
frightened him.

It rang only once. He could hear the phone had been answered but no one
spoke: he was going to have make the first move.