The Zigzag Kid (11 page)

Because what if this turned dangerous? Or even more unlawful?

What if I disappointed both Dad and Felix?

What if we were caught?

The plan unfolded before me now in all its grandeur and absurdity: the risk Dad had taken! To let me do something that was clearly illegal, like the crime I'd committed on the train? Because if the police caught up with me and learned what really happened, Dad would lose his job, and his crooked partner would take over, and what would Dad have to live for without his work, without the force? “I won't squeal,” I swore to myself. “Even if they torture me in the interrogation cellars, I will never betray him to the police!”

No, no, I couldn't imagine it. I didn't dare. I took a deep breath. I got ready to ask a long question, to clarify things once and for all:

“Wwwwhat wwwill…?”

I gagged on the words. I sat there shamefaced. Felix smiled wanly.

Nu
, I told myself, go on!

“And wwwhat wwwill … will we do together?”

The pipsqueaky voice that hovered in the air was mine apparently.

“Oi, Mr. Feuerberg,” said Felix, waving his hand. “You and I do things you never dream of!”

“And … if they catch us?”

“They will not catch us.”

It was now or never. “Hey—uh—Felix … did they … I mean … the police, ever catch you?”

He went on humming as though he hadn't heard me. It was a while before he turned to me and answered: “One time, once and no more.”

He smiled to himself, but only his lips were smiling now, and the cruel line I had seen over his mouth before stood out again.

“How many years have you known my dad?”

“Oho! Ten years, maybe!”

I hesitated, carefully wording my next question to avoid insulting him. “You know each other—professionally?”

Now the wrinkles around his eyes smiled, too. “Professionally. Yes, you put this very well.”

He speeded up and concentrated on his driving, whistling a jolly tune. Now and then he would hum with glee. “Professionally!”—accompanying the word with a “pam pam—pam pam pam.” He was always whistling or humming, I noticed, filling the air with chirping or buzzing noises. Maybe this is what happens to grownups who were like me when they were young, I mused.

But in spite of my uncertainty and confusion about him, I still got a good feeling whenever I looked at his hands. They were long and calm and manly. The only thing that bothered me was the ring, the big gold ring he wore which suggested a kind of flashiness and self-indulgence I had never met with before. The stone was black, black as a tunnel under a prison wall, shiny as a gun barrel, black and shiny as flashing dark secrets.

So I kept my eyes on his right hand. It gave me courage and made me like him and want to stay with him. The right hand was the good hand. It kept me safe, and reminded me that Dad was watching over me from afar, that he had chosen Felix for this mission with the utmost care. A single glance at Felix's right hand made you see that he was like the legendary
Shushus
who don't know the meaning of fear. Or a criminal with a heart of gold.

“Dad's a champion, isn't he?”

“First-rate detective.
Número uno!”
he said.

Too bad Dad wasn't around to hear this. He'd lost so much confidence
after falling out with his buddies on the force. None of the other detectives wanted to work with him anymore. There was even an article about him in the morning paper, saying he had bungled every big case that came his way, and that his hatred of criminals made him charge into the most delicate investigations like a raging elephant. I was hoping Felix hadn't read that paper.

“Only, he's been having some trouble recently,” I ventured.

“Ach, it's all goulash what they print in newspapers!” said Felix dismissively. “They do not see that your Mr. Father is no ordinary, run-of-mill detective! It is in his blood! He is not like others, office clerks in uniform! He is real maestro, he is among detectives like Bugatti among cars!” And for emphasis he raised a finger, the one with the ring, which no longer bothered me somehow.

“But this one reporter,” I said embarrassedly, “wrote that whenever he has to deal with a criminal, he goes berserk and blows the case.”

“Ach, they are crazy in head!” Felix was furious. “I also read what those stupidiots say! Do they think fighting crime is children's game?”

“And he hasn't been promoted for such a long time,” I confided uneasily, knowing it was wrong of me to divulge a thing like that. We of the police are not supposed to hang our dirty linen out in public, but I was full of resentment at the way Dad had been treated, and I knew that Felix was on our side.

“Is swinishness!” grumbled Felix, slapping the steering wheel. “They resent your father because he is fantastical!” he said, locking his mouth nearly up to his nose.

I tried to remember his exact words so I'd be able to repeat them to Dad the following day. I only wished Gabi had heard, too. For some time now she'd been annoyingly critical of Dad's work, and I couldn't understand why he put up with her insulting remarks, like that he should quit the force and start looking for another job. She was blunt, all right.

“Another job?” Dad's jaw dropped. “This is me you're talking to!”

We were standing in the kitchen, the three of us, fixing supper just then. I froze in front of the frying pan. Dad was beginning to swell up over the macaroni pot. Gabi waited for an outburst from him, and when
none seemed forthcoming, she worked up her courage: “Quit the job. Enough already!” Dead silence. Dad, amazingly enough, controlled his tongue! Gabi went on cutting the vegetables with a trembling hand. “You've given nearly twenty years of your life to the job, and a lot more than that. It's high time you tried something different, something more normal, with regular hours. And no guns, no shooting, no risking your life day after day.” Here she glanced around. He still hadn't opened his mouth. She took a deep breath and blurted, “I suggest that you retire early, with severance pay. I'll retire with you; we'll put our savings together and open a restaurant. Why not?”

From crooks to cooks? This was a pretty astounding idea. Dad croaked like a frog who'd dug a tunnel in England and popped out in a kitchen in the middle of France. “A restaurant? A restaurant you say?!”

“Yes! A restaurant! With homemade food. I'll be the cook, and you be the mana—”

“And maybe I'll put on a nice pink apron and help you cook, huh? Maybe you think I'm too old to be a detective? Go on, say it, say it!”

I could see what we were heading for. I tried to change the subject fast, but I couldn't think of anything to say. Now they would fight. Then she would leave. And every temporary departure brought the final one that much closer. I couldn't live this way, in the midst of so much uncertainty.

“You used to be a good detective,” said Gabi in a quiet voice that boded ill. “You used to be the best, and everybody knows it. But that one episode and what you went through as a result of it have made you lose all sense of proportion. You treat your work like some private vendetta against crime. Don't you see that it's impossible to maintain professional objectivity that way?”

Silence in the shambles. No one could say a thing like that to Dad and hope to come out alive.

But still he didn't answer! He didn't answer her!

“You're in such a fever to get back at every petty criminal, you wind up giving yourself away!” More silence. Slowly and deliberately, Dad stirred the macaroni. Gabi was so tense, she kept chopping the same
poor tomato into tinier and tinier pieces. She could tell that Dad was listening to her for real this time, and here was my chance to say something that would shut her up. What did she know about being a detective? What did she understand about the eternal battle between the police force and the dark forces of crime?

But then a memory flashed through my mind. Something which happened while Dad and I were lying in wait for some car thieves recently. It was the way he acted, like Gabi said. He had spoiled the ambush, and it was lucky I just happened to be there with him.

I went on quietly scrambling the eggs in the pan. A new situation was developing, it seemed.

“I really blew up when they called me a raging elephant,” said Dad quietly. “Imagine how you'd feel if they called you an … um …”

With heroic effort, Gabi managed to ignore this lame remark. “It's true the article was vicious,” she said. “But there were one or two points you ought to consider if you want to change your life!” At last she set aside that tomato, glared briefly at the red pulp on the cutting board, and turned her vengeance on a cucumber. “You're so blinded by rage whenever you come across any petty crook that you lose the patience you need to trap him! Or your timing goes wrong during the interrogation! You don't have enough perseverance to make use of the simplest strategies!” And she slashed the cucumber three times for emphasis.

We were back to back, the three of us, but I peeked around out of the corner of my eye.

“And I bet there's not a single drop of iodine in the whole damn house!” she shouted suddenly, dropping the knife and rushing to the bathroom to stop the blood that dripped from her finger. Dad stood motionless, his back like a cast-iron wall. I couldn't decide whether to go after her or stay and comfort Dad. My loyalties were divided. He hadn't seen what I saw: that Gabi deliberately cut her finger. Grimacing with self-hatred, she had cut her own finger with the knife.

“She's right,” said Dad in a faraway voice. “Everybody's telling me, but I never listen. She had to say it to my face because it hurts her and she really cares about me. She's right.”

“No, she's not,” I protested, my mouth dry with fear. What did he mean, she was right? Dad was the greatest detective in the whole country. He had to stay on the job until I could join him so we could be a team.

“Wait here, Nonny,” said Dad, his voice so gentle I barely recognized it. “I'll go bandage her finger.”

How I wished that Gabi were beside me in the car, listening to Felix talk.

“And perhaps he is best not only in Israel,” Felix continued, nodding his head for emphasis as he repeated the words, “not only in Israel!”

I inhaled deeply, taking in what he had said. The only interruptions to our manly silence were the humming and muttering noises Felix made. I was feeling peaceful, dreamy and peaceful, almost as if I were listening to a story about myself, a kid whose dad, a high-ranking detective, arranged an adventure for him in honor of his bar mitzvah, a voyage to the darker side of life, as a special gift for his coming-of-age so that he would know both sides of life, and remember that even his dad had another side—a side that was wild and free and happy.

Or had been, once upon a time.

When he was young. Before he married Zohara, before he joined the force. I knew. Gabi had told me about it, or hinted, rather, and Dad's cronies would sometimes recall with a wink the rapscallion he used to be. He had two friends, the Three Musketeers, people called them, army buddies who started a furniture-moving business in Jerusalem, not that Dad ever mentioned any of this; for him the mere thought of happier days seemed to desecrate his mourning over Zohara. But I collected bits of information from Gabi and pieced them together in my heart: once upon a time in Jerusalem there were three famous hooligans with hearts of gold, chief among them, Koby Feuerberg, with his cowboy hat and horselaugh and daredevil exploits, like dancing a waltz with a refrigerator strapped to his back, or stealing a zebra from the Biblical Zoo and riding it through the streets; and sometimes in the evening, after work, the Three Musketeers would comb their hair with brilliantine and crash the fancy parties in the better neighborhoods, where one of them would cut in on the belle of the ball and whirl her around till she
nearly fainted, while the other two stood guard to make sure no one else cut in, and they would suddenly vanish and turn up at another party. A lot of ladies were after him in his bachelor days, and he would sweep them off their feet, but never fall in love with any of them, he always said no woman alive could catch a man like him, she'd have to hunt him down and shoot him first, if she really wanted him, that is, he would laugh. Yes, that's how Dad used to be a million years ago, whizzing through the streets of Jerusalem on his motorcycle with the little sidecar where a tomato plant grew so luxuriantly that he could pick a fresh tomato and eat it as he drove, and people called him the Tomato Cowboy, and whenever a policeman pulled him over for reckless driving, Dad would bribe him with a luscious tomato, and everyone would laugh and sigh, What can you do, a cowboy is a cowboy …

Where was he now, the man he used to be? Why had I never known him? Why had he never peeked out at me from behind Dad's eyes? Where was the prankster who liked to steal cars and mount them with square wooden wheels? Why did grief come and dig that terrible crease between his eyes with an iron claw?

Felix drove on, still humming, and I only hoped I would be able to keep my heart from bursting through my teeth. I kept touching my lucky charm, the bullet Dad had taken out of him. Some criminal had fired a gun at him, but Dad kept shooting till the guy surrendered. I wore that bullet on a chain around my neck and never took it off, even in the shower. It came out of his body, and it would stay with me for the rest of my life. We're together, I reflected, I'm here with Dad. Everything I do now I do with him, even if I break the law; his spirit is with me in the bullet I wear around my neck. All of him—even the long-lost cowboy—is with me, next to my heart.

This was a moment of rare insight. I didn't always realize how close we were, Dad and I, closer than twins, even closer than two pros working side by side who understand each other without saying a word. Sometimes I'd get this lacerating fear that I would grow up to be different from him. But just then, in the speeding Beetle, I felt that I was growing, growing with him, getting to know him to the depths of his soul, perhaps for the first time ever. Because only now had he revealed
himself fully to me, and given of himself with unflinching generosity, and this was his greatest gift for my bar mitzvah.