The Shadow Man (54 page)

‘I’d like that,’ Winter said quietly.

They moved to the unmarked car.

‘This bring back memories?’ Robinson asked.

‘You get to be my age,’ Winter replied, smiling slowly, ‘and everything brings back memories. Spend more time looking backward than forward.’

‘Not you,’ said the younger man. ‘Come on, Simon. Let’s finish this guy now. Put the cuffs on him and the fear of God inside him. You and I. Show him he ain’t so goddamn smart after all.’

‘I’d like that,’ the old detective replied, although he did not know whether he was lying or not.

They chose a vantage point around the corner from the small house, shielded from sight by an eight-foot-high stucco wall that enclosed the target’s neighbor’s small estate. The SWAT captain made one final check, adjusting the earpiece on his intercom set, made the men count off, and then, with a small chopping motion of his hand, sent the team into action.

The squad barreled around the corner and swooped down the street. Their black jumpsuits blended with the inky midnight air. Robinson, poised just behind the SWAT captain, waited like a sprinter at the start of a race, muscles tightening while listening for the starter’s gun.

The SWAT captain listened, hunched over, then repeated out loud in a soft voice: ‘Back door team in place. No sign of activity. Side door team, ready. Okay, here we go!’

The front door group swung out and down the street on the run, their boots slapping the sidewalk like a drummer beating a reveille.

Walter Robinson held out his hand to restrain Simon Winter for a moment or two, then the two of them lurched forward, just behind the quick-moving dark shapes. The ground beneath their feet seemed to evaporate, and Robinson was hardly aware of the energy he was expending. He had a flash, a momentary memory of his own, cutting down the center of a football field, reaching for the ball suspended in the air, the roar of the spectators dull and distant in his ears. But then this passed and he found his own vision tunneled in on the front door, where a burly SWAT member was readying a door-buster. ‘Police! Freeze!’ the SWAT captain shouted.

And as Robinson watched, the man swung the thick black steel door-buster and there was a resounding crash and splintering of wood.

A few feet behind Robinson, Simon Winter moved swiftly, his breath coming in jagged pulses.

He immediately heard a high-pitched scream of shock and panic, and glass breaking, and he heard the SWAT captain yelling, above the sudden cacophony, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ and he saw the team members pouring through the shattered door into the house. Robinson had surged ahead as well, trailing the team by a few feet, gun in his outstretched hand. The air was filled with voices, all shouting commands, and he pushed himself toward the entrance of the house and the light that was pouring out into the night like a dam that had sprung a leak.

Simon Winter heard Robinson screaming: ‘Get down! Get down on the floor! Hands behind your head!’

These words mingled with the woman’s frightened cries, sounds that resembled nothing human other than the emotion of fear that engendered them.

Winter vaulted through the door and saw the SWAT captain and one of his men bent over a large man on the floor of the modest house. Robinson, gun pushed up against the man’s ear, was shouting commands. To the side, two of the SWAT team held a small, thin, elderly woman. Her white hair had been pinned back and had come loose, so that it flew around her face. She was crying piteously, ‘What have we done? What have we done?’

The SWAT captain watched as Robinson snapped handcuffs around the supine man’s wrists and then half rose.

‘We’re clear,’ the captain said with satisfaction. He turned to Robinson. ‘Told you so. Piece of cake. So this is the tough old killer you’ve been hunting?’ In a corner of

the room the television set was blaring loudly, a late night talk-show host was making jokes. The SWAT captain gestured for one of his men to shut it off.

Walter Robinson jerked the man to his seat and spoke rapidly. ‘David Isaacson, you’re under arrest for murder.’ Simon Winter saw the man’s face for the first time. Light seemed to slice across the fear in the man’s eyes, leaving a scar.

‘What have I done?’ the man asked. ‘Shadow Man!’ Robinson fairly spat the words as he jerked him up to his feet. The detective seemed to rattle the man, pushing his face right up to the suspect’s. Then he thrust him into a nearby armchair. ‘You’re going away. I’m going to see you on Death Row.’

Simon Winter stepped forward then and stared hard at the man in the chair.

‘Oh, my God,’ he said slowly, softly. He reached out and seized Walter Robinson’s arm. The young detective turned briskly, irritated at being stopped, and then hesitated when he saw Winter’s eyes. ‘What is it?’ he asked angrily.

Winter felt his mouth grow dry, and the words he spoke seemed to crack and splinter like the door to the house. ‘Walter, look at him, goddamn it!’ ‘What?’

‘Look at his face! The damn picture! He doesn’t look a thing like the goddamn composite!’

For the first time Walter Robinson turned back to the man he’d arrested and stared hard into his face. ‘No,’ he said slowly, ‘Simon you’re wrong. The build is the same, the hair—’

‘Look at him! That’s not the man Esther Weiss picked out!’

Walter Robinson, a man who sometimes arrogantly

prided himself on remaining calm under the most difficult of situations, felt a touch of panic soar through him, unwanted, unwieldy, and almost out of control. His eyes widened as if trying to take in the contradiction between the picture and the man sitting before him.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

‘I am David Isaacson,’ the man stammered in reply. ‘What have I done?’ he asked again.

‘Where do you come from?’

The man looked confused, and so Simon Winter stepped forward.

‘How long have you been here?’

‘On Miami Beach, some twenty years.’

‘Before that?’

‘In New York City. I was a furrier.’

‘And before that?’

‘From Poland, once, many years ago when I was young.’

The man’s wife finally managed to pull loose from the SWAT team members and threw herself next to her husband. ‘David, what is it, what is it?’ she cried, clinging hysterically. She turned to the policemen and shouted with bitter anger: ‘Gestapo! Nazis!’

The room grew quiet for an instant, save for the woman’s sobs.

‘Are you a survivor?’ Simon Winter asked abruptly.

The man nodded. ‘What is this?’ he asked, as if sliding into shock.

Robinson stepped over to David Isaacson, grabbed his forearm and pulled it forward, rotating it slightly. He ripped the man’s shirt as he pushed it up. In almost the same motion, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the paper on which he’d written the number Espy Martinez gave him. He thrust the paper down next to the purple-blue tattoo on the man’s wizened forearm, and saw immediately that the two numbers were different.

‘Oh, my God,’ he said slowly.

‘Gestapo!’ the wife cried out again.

Simon Winter saw the same and turned, staring back through the smashed door, out into the night, which seemed to mock them with every shadow.

You’re close, he thought. You’re close. But where?

The Shadow Man stood silently in a darkened space at the edge of an alleyway, just past the lip of light tossed onto the sidewalk by the fluorescent sign of a vacant pharmacy. He looked up at the sixth floor of the rabbi’s apartment building.

The side of him that usually spoke of caution argued that he was unwise to stand there, even for a moment, even if unseen and undetected. He sometimes thought listening to this voice within him was like having some overly protective angel perched on his shoulder. This time, the voice was shrill, insistent, and it demanded that he leave, and leave that instant.

Pack a bag. Check into a hotel by the airport. Fly out on the first plane in the morning.

He shook his head.

I have unfinished business, he argued to himself. It awaits me up in that building.

What business? Stay safe. You have used up this life, as you have used up others before. These years on Miami Beach have been pleasant and profitable, but they have finished now. You knew this time might arrive, and now it has. Too many people are circling around, looking under rocks, checking behind doors, searching for you. You have

heard people speaking about the Shadow Man as if they knew you. It is time to fade away and become someone new.

He leaned back farther into the darkness of the alleyway, pushing his back against a dingy gray wall.

Los Angeles will be nice, he told himself. There was an apartment, bank accounts, and a different identity awaiting him there. Chicago would be acceptable as well. The groundwork for a similar arrangement was established in that city. In Los Angeles, I will have to get a car. Everyone there drives. But in Chicago, that won’t be necessary. In Los Angeles, he was to be a retired businessman; in Chicago, he was already known as a retired investor. He considered the two situations, unable to make up his mind. It made no difference, really, he told himself. As soon as he took up either one identity or the next, he would start in building the framework for a third in some new city, so that there was always more than a single option awaiting him. Perhaps Phoenix or Tucson, he thought. Someplace warm. He did not like the idea of a winter in Chicago. He realized he would have to do some research. He did not know whether either of those cities had the type of elderly Jewish community he could tap into. Were there survivors there? he wondered.

Deep in the distant night, an auto alarm system klaxon horn severed the still heat. He listened for a moment, until it abruptly disappeared. He spat on the ground, suddenly furious. I have enjoyed it here, he whispered to himself. All these years, I have been comfortable. He liked the way the tropical nighttime had a richness to its darkness that seemed to cloak all his angers.

He considered the list of enemies arrayed against him. He dismissed the policeman and the prosecutor swiftly,

making a small, involuntary motion with his hand, as if carving a piece of the dark air in front of him. He never feared the police. He believed they were too stolid and unimaginative to catch him. They searched for evidence and clues, and never understood that he was more of an idea. Although this was perhaps as close as they had ever been - as close as anyone had been since 1944 - he still considered them too many steps behind him. But his cautious side reminded him: Never before had the police actually known he existed. This made him pause, until his arrogant persona recalled that this was precisely the reason he’d taken so much trouble over the years to always have at least two different identities available. That he’d infrequently needed to hurry was testimony to his careful planning. And, he thought harshly, this is really no different.

But then he pictured the old detective, the neighbor, which made him hesitate. This man worried him more, mostly because he did not completely understand why he was in the picture at all, and because he was neither official nor someone like his usual quarry. The Shadow Man conjured up a vision of Simon Winter and made a quick assessment. He seems dogged and intelligent. He has instincts that are formidable. But he is not here tonight, and will be left clutching at emptiness in the morning. So, the Shadow Man thought, he is perhaps dangerous, but he will remain too slow and out of step. And what really are his resources? A cleverness and some experience. Enough to find me? No.

Still, he shook his head and told himself: You should have killed him that night in his apartment. He was lucky.

He won’t be lucky again.

The Shadow Man took a deep breath of air and pictured the old pair up in the apartment.

They are the real danger, he told himself. They always have been. They always will be.

A star shell of fury burst within his chest, stoked by long memory.

They have always been to blame. Since the very beginning.

They are the only ones who remember.

They are the only ones who can pick me out.

For a moment he shifted his feet, then forced himself to remain under control, although he felt withering rage resounding throughout his body. How many were left? he wondered suddenly. These two? Others? How many more can there be, who can recall the Shadow Man?

Perhaps none.

He allowed himself a small smile.

Maybe these are the last two who ever saw the Shadow Man. He had spent much time, in archives and memorials, among documents and videotapes, reading books and studying faces. Years of work. Killing work. It was inevitable, he told himself. Inevitable that someday you would find the end of the line. The last Jews from Berlin. And perhaps they were right there in front of him, waiting in that sixth-floor apartment.

This thought filled him with a familiar and welcome desire.

And so, even if his cautious side told him that escape was wise, and had been insisting this since earlier in the evening, when he’d first overheard someone say ‘Shadow Man’ as he’d stepped onto the elevator in his own condominium and had patiently listened to the conversation beside him and learned of the announcement made in those places of worship, his sense of fury told him that he could not depart for any of the other lives he’d so carefully established knowing that those two old people were left

behind to bedevil him on some future date.

Inwardly, he smiled. -

I will enjoy ending them, he thought. Perhaps it will be a beginning for myself.

The Shadow Man collected himself. He compromised with his cautious side: I will leave by midday. I will finish this and then I will not hesitate, I will depart.

He told himself that truly there was not that much to worry about.

I have prepared this well. There has been no hurry to this collection. I have been inside the rabbi’s building three separate times, been to the roof and been to the basement. I have examined the electrical system and the circuit breaker box, and I have stood outside the rabbi’s apartment. I have even checked the old microfilm of the architect’s plans filed with the City of Miami Beach, showing the layout of the rooms inside. I have prepared a plan and it will work.