The Shadow Man (29 page)

He punched the playback button and after a moment of hissing, electronic noises, heard the rabbi’s voice. It sounded distant, tinny. But the anxiety contained in each

word was still crystal: ‘Mr Winter? Please call me as soon as you can …’

There was a momentary hesitation, before the rabbi added:

‘It’s Irving Silver. He’s disappeared.’

There was another pause, and then:

‘I was wrong. Oh, my God. We should have let him get

a gun___’

And with that the machine clicked off.

In their faces he could see anger and fear vying for

control.

Simon Winter gave a small wave and hurried toward Frieda Kroner and Rabbi Rubinstein. They were standing outside the long porch of the Columbus, an old residential hotel a block from the ocean. The flat white walls of the building seemed to glow against the lustrous night black, like the graying embers of a near-dead fire. In the midday, he knew, the porch would have been crowded with the elderly residents of the hotel, patiently taking the sun, but now it was empty, save for two dozen scattered lawn chairs and the two people anxiously waiting for him.

The rabbi was nervously rubbing his free hand across his forehead, as if trying to scratch out a thought. The other hand was clutching a black-bound copy of the Old Testament close to his chest. He saw that Winter had spotted this, and so he said, instead of an introduction: ‘In times like these, Detective, the Word of God brings comfort.’

Winter nodded. ‘And what does He say?’

‘He says to trust in His wisdom.’

That’s what He always says, Simon Winter thought.

Frieda Kroner pointed toward the front entrance to the

hotel. ‘There is where Irving isn’t,’ she said. ‘He is gone.’ She hesitated, then added: ‘The Shadow Man got him.’

‘How can you be certain?’ Winter asked. She did not reply, nor did the rabbi. Instead, she turned and charged up the stairs, her momentum seeming to sweep the others along in her wake. Winter paused as the three of them entered the lobby. On one wall was a fading mural depicting the hotel’s namesake arriving at the New World. It had that 1930s stylized feel to it, an immense fiction; all the gestures were heroic, all the figures, natives and Spaniards alike, had a calm and reverential air to them, as if they innately understood the moment in history that they were depicting. There was no hint of strife or blood or terror or any of the things that were to soon follow. In front of the mural there was an old black leather sofa. In the center of it a thin, gray-haired man sat, reading a newspaper in Yiddish. He looked up at them as they entered, then turned back to the paper studiously. But Simon Winter noticed he had placed his eyeglasses on the seat beside him, so that in truth he was listening and watching them. Curiosity, the detective thought, occasionally seems to be the province of either very young or very old age.

‘This way,’ Frieda Kroner said. She grasped his elbow and steered him toward the corner of the lobby, where a man sat at a small desk adorned with an antiquated plug-in-style telephone switchboard. He was younger than they were, and Hispanic. He shrugged as they approached.

‘Mrs Kroner,’ he said in heavily accented English. ‘What can I say? I have no word from Mr Silver. Not in the slightest.’

“Did the police speak with you?’

“Yes. Si, of course. Right after you called them. They ask me if Mr Silver is unusual to not be here, and I say yes, and

they ask if I notice anything unusual or funny, but this I do not notice, and so they give me a number and I am supposed to call them if I should know anything, but that is it.’

‘Stupid,’ she muttered. ‘Der Schattenmann is killing us and the police are wondering if there is something unusual. Damn!’ She shook her head vigorously. ‘I want you to let my friends and I into Mr Silver’s apartment.’

‘Mrs Kroner, I—’

‘Immediately.’

‘But this is—’

‘Jose,’ she said, drawing herself upright, her face riven with demand, ‘right now.’ She swung her hand toward the Rabbi. ‘This man is a rabbi. You cannot keep him waiting.’

She said this with such authority that the clerk immediately rose, nodding his head toward Rabbi Rubinstein. ‘But only for a minute, Mrs Kroner, please.’

The inside of Irving Silver’s tiny apartment was immaculate. A few books arranged by height on a shelf, magazines on a coffee table placed carefully, like a display, so that their titles could be easily read. On a bureau top were the expected photographs of distant relatives. Simon Winter slid a hand across the surface. Behind him the rabbi and Mrs Kroner waited expectantly, as if they were anticipating some pronouncement. He moved quickly through the small space; it was only a single bedroom apartment, less even than Sophie Millstein’s or his own. The bed was made with hospital corners. He stopped by a cheap linoleum kitchen table and saw that there were two place settings arranged on top. Irving Silver had been expecting company. There was no indication of a struggle, no signs of a breakin. No evidence that Irving Silver had been taken someplace against his will. In short, what

Simon Winter saw was the apartment of a man who might have stepped out to purchase some missing item at the corner store, and who could come walking back through the door at any second.

He turned toward the others.

‘You see,’ Frieda Kroner said, pointing at the place settings. Then her finger started to waver in the air and he saw her jaw start to quiver around the next words that cracked from between her lips: ‘Irving is dead.’

The rabbi turned and threw an arm around Frieda Kroner as her shoulders heaved with yet another sob. But he turned his eyes toward Winter and he nodded.

Behind them, in the hallway, Jose the desk clerk, shuffled about impatiently. ‘Please, Mrs Kroner, is not necessarily possible true,’ he said. ‘I must lock up, please.’

Back in the lobby, Winter saw that the man reading in front of the mural had disappeared. Frieda Kroner continued to cry as the rabbi steered her toward the exit. But when they reached the sidewalk, she abruptly straightened up, shaking loose from Rabbi Rubinstein’s arm. She looked wildly toward the two men, then stepped aside, turned to the empty street and in a loud, furious voice, shouted in her native German: ‘You will not win this time!’

The words echoed emptily down the street.

Simon Winter tried to comfort her. ‘Mrs Kroner, I don’t see anything to suggest—’

She spun about angrily. ‘You are a detective and you cannot see?’

The rabbi clapped his hands together in frustration. This is how it was. This is how it is!’

‘We should have known better,’ Frieda Kroner said bitterly. ‘Us of all people. If you wait. If you do nothing. If you sit around. Then they will come for you…’ She

hesitated, then shook her head. ‘No. Not they. He will come for you. This time, it is only a he. But it is the same, Detective. If you do nothing …’

‘Then you will die,’ Rabbi Rubinstein said coldly. ‘Nothing has changed. He will find us and we will die.’

‘Like he found poor Sophie and Air Stein and now Irving.’

The man’s name seemed to snag on her lips. She stood in the wan light from the entrance to the residential hotel staring intently at the streams of darkness that melded onto the cityscape.

‘Irving is gone,’ she said. ‘The Shadow Man got him.’ ‘I told you,’ Rabbi Rubinstein said quietly. ‘I told you. He means to kill us all.’

Frieda Kroner sighed deeply, nodding her head. She trapped a half gasp, half-sob near the back of her throat, and Simon Winter saw her eyes were tinged with red. ‘Irving, you must be thinking Mr Winter, is not such a pleasant man, but you are mistaken. There is much kindness within him and good company, especially for an old lonely widow like myself. And now he is gone. I did not think it would happen like this.’

For a moment she seemed to totter on the edge of grief. Then she growled a guttural, angry sound, like some sort of wounded, dangerous beast.

‘This is the way it always was,’ she added harshly. ‘One moment they were right there, at your side, and then, the next, they were gone. Disappeared. Vanished as if a hole had opened up in the bottom of the world and swallowed them up.’

‘This is true, Detective,’ the rabbi added. ‘Soon there will be none of us left and no one will remember the Shadow Man.’

‘Back up,’ he said. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. What

makes you so sure Mr Silver has disappeared. What do you mean, gone?’

Frieda Kroner answered sharply. ‘Gone means dead. That was how it always was.’

‘How?’

Rabbi Rubinstein held up his hand, a small conciliatory motion. ‘Frieda, tell Mr Winter. Then he will understand.’

She glared for a moment at the rabbi, then replied:

‘Irving is a man of habits. If it is Monday, then he goes to the fish store, the fruit stand, and finally the supermarket. Then he takes his purchases home and he puts them away. Then he goes to the library to read the out-of-town papers, and then he takes a short walk on the boardwalk, and finally he comes home and telephones me and perhaps we go to see a movie because on Monday it is not so crowded as the weekend. If this is Wednesday, then Irving attends the bridge club in the afternoon, after stopping by my place to pick me up, and sometimes staying late. On Thursday, he has a discussion group at the library. On Friday there are services in the evening. These are the things that make up Irving’s life now, just as they do mine, and the rabbi’s as well. It is not so different for many of the survivors, Mr Winter. We practice order and regimen. It is as if the Nazis somehow installed a clock in each of us, and we must fill it with precision. So, when I arrive at Irving’s home and he is not there to attend the bingo at the civic center, as we do on every Tuesday, then I know that Irving is in trouble. And there are only three sorts of trouble out there for people like us, Mr Winter.’ “What are those, Mrs Kroner?’

‘There is disease. Disease and age, Mr Winter. Sometimes they seem like the same thing. Perhaps Irving has had a stroke or an accident…’

‘But we called the hospitals, and they have no record of him,’ Rabbi Rubinstein interjected.

‘And there is violence. Perhaps some one of these young people who are taking over the Beach with all their noise and fast cars has mugged him in some alleyway

‘But this the police do not report.’ Again the rabbi stepped in.

‘And then, of course, there is Der Schattenmann.’ ‘You spoke with the police?’

‘Yes. Of course. Right away,’ the rabbi said. ‘They told us that they cannot file a missing persons report for twenty-four hours, but they were kind enough to check the accidents and crimes for us. And even then, they said there was nothing much they could do.’

‘Not until they find a body. Or some evidence of a crime having been committed,’ Frieda Kroner added bitterly. ‘An old person on Miami Beach who is not home when he should be is not maybe the crime of the century, Detective. They do not treat this like the Lindbergh kidnapping. They are polite. But that is all. Just polite.’

She hissed, to herself: ‘The Shadow Man lives amongst us, and they are polite!’

Simon Winter nodded. He knew this. Absent a kidnapping note, a bloodstained crime scene, or some other overt and unmistakable sign, the police would limit their inquiry to a teletype message to the other local forces and a be-on-the-lookout-for, with perhaps a distribution of a picture at the daily roll calls.

‘Tell me, could there be some other explanation for his disappearance?’ ‘Like what?’

‘Fear. Perhaps he went to visit relatives …’ ‘Without telling us?’ This didn’t seem likely.

‘Has he ever experienced forgetfulness? An episode of blackouts?’

The rabbi shook his head angrily. ‘We are not senile! None of us, thank God, suffer from dementia! If Irving has disappeared, there can be but one explanation!’

Simon Winter thought hard. All the old people on the Beach were creatures of habit, some in the extreme, like Irving Silver. Like Sophie Millstein. Like Herman Stein. They had all built lives around moments of certainty, as if the inflexible demands of this appointment, this schedule, this meeting, this meal, this medication, all precluded the spontaneity of death from entering their lives.

And, he thought, who is more vulnerable than someone of rigid habit?

Winter shook his head. ‘But even if this were the Shadow Man, well, Sophie was attacked in her apartment. Herman Stein died in his apartment. His pattern seems clear—’

Now it was the rabbi’s turn to interrupt with an exasperated shake of the head. ‘You still do not understand, Mr Winter! Does a shadow have form? Does a shadow have substance? Is it not something that shifts and changes with every motion of the sun or the moon or the earth? That was why he was so frightening, Mr Winter. Back then, back in Berlin … If we’d known he liked to ride the trams, well, then we would have avoided the trams. If we knew which streets he walked, or which subway he frequented … If we knew which park he took the air in … But none of these things were known. Every moment was different. And why would he be different today? If he kills Sophie and poor Mr Stein in their apartments, then the Shadow Man will shift form and find some other location, and that is where Irving lies now. I know it!’

These final words cracked and splintered in the stale

humid air on the street. For a moment the old rabbi was quiet, then he added fiercely: ‘He would have fought. Fought hard and long. He would have bit and scratched and used everything he had. Irving was tough. He was a hard man. He took his daily walks. He lifted things and swam in the ocean on warm days. There was still muscle there, and he would have fought hard, like a tiger, because Irving loved life.’

‘There were no signs of a fight.’

‘I could see that. It means the Shadow Man stole him from the street’

‘That would be difficult. Most of the time this place is crowded. Look at the porch. Ordinarily there would be dozens of people watching the street….’

‘This would be difficult for most criminals, yes, Detective, you are correct,’ the rabbi said patiently. ‘But you must remember: this is what he did, over and over, for all those war years. Quietly and unobtrusively he ended your life. Tell me, Mr Winter, have you not felt your hand slip while it holds a razor, and when you look up into the mirror, see that you have sliced yourself? That there is blood running down your chin? But did you feel the pain of the cut? No, I think not. And that is the sort of man he is.’