“That’s why I love you, Terry,” Rabbi Kales said, “no bullshit. Tell me. How is the law practice?”
David slid his seat next to Rabbi Kales, so that they were only inches apart. “Rabbi,” David said, his voice not much above a whisper. Who knew who was listening? “You don’t need to pretend, okay? Rachel knows who I am. We can just be . . . who we are, all right?”
Rabbi Kales took a bite of his sandwich, then a spoonful of potato salad, seemed to consider everything David said. “Terry, I think Rachel is trying to kill me.”
“No,” David said, “no. Rabbi. Rachel is not trying to kill you.”
Rachel walked into the kitchen, Rabbi Kales’s glasses in hand. She opened them up, slid them onto his face. “Now you can see the real world.”
Rabbi Kales touched Rachel’s cheek. “There’s that beautiful punim,” he said. “The most beautiful girl in the whole world. You never age a day, sweetheart.” He turned to David. “Your wife. Is she as beautiful as my wife?”
“All wives are,” David said.
“That’s the right answer,” Rabbi Kales said. “The Talmud. Do you know what it says about wives, Terry?”
“No,” David said.
“It says a man should love his wife more than he loves himself,” Rabbi Kales said. “It tells us to honor her life more than we honor our own, and if we do so, we will be wealthy beyond all compare. And look at me, Terry. I must sleep in a bed of gold.”
“Eat, Poppa,” Rachel said. She looked at her watch. “Shit. I’m late.” She looked up at the ceiling, as if God might show up in the drywall, but in fact she was trying to stop her tears. David handed her his handkerchief. She did that thing women always do—she dabbed at the corners of her eyes—and then tried to give it back.
“Keep it,” David said.
“It’s monogrammed,” she said.
“A couple years,” David said, “sell it on eBay, put the kids through school.”
Rachel folded the hanky, dropped it into her purse, which was sitting on the counter, then squeezed her father’s shoulder. “Poppa, I have to go. Terry is going to walk me out, but then he’ll be back, okay?”
“We have much to discuss, Terry,” Rabbi Kales said.
“Of course, Rabbi,” David said.
RACHEL LEANED AGAINST HER CAR, SMOKING AND SOBBING.
“How long has he been like this?” David asked.
“Every day he’s worse,” Rachel said. “The nurses take wonderful care of him. But the progression is startling.”
“Jesus,” David said. “I don’t know if I can go back in there.”
“You have to,” she said. “He’ll eat until he’s sick otherwise.”
“So he can pull up the Talmud,” David said, “but he can’t remember you’re his daughter?”
“His book,” Rachel said, “has lost its narrator. He needs someone to tell him what’s going on. Sometimes it works, sometimes it frustrates him, sometimes it frightens him, so, I think, well, what does it matter? Let him believe what he wants.”
“For how long?”
Rachel took a step back. “What do you mean?”
“If you intend to disappear when I leave,” David said, “do you have a plan for him?”
“Who said disappear? I just want out.”
“There is no out,” David said.
“My husband,” Rachel said, “is going to die. His cancer is Stage 4.”
“That could take five years.”
“Jesus Christ, Rabbi, I don’t want him to die. I’m just saying it’s time for me to be free of this. If I can help you, don’t you want that?”
“What? You’re just going to take his children and slide into protective custody while he’s sucking radiation? You think the FBI helps you with all that and nothing happens to your husband?”
“I don’t know, Rabbi,” Rachel said, “I’ve never gone into protective custody. Have you, Sal?”
Hearing his name in her mouth was like having a cat scratch. Harmless, but it pissed him off.
“I had a friend growing up named Paul Bruno,” Sal said. “Was gay, which was, you know, hard in an organized crime family. But he found his way. Spent, I dunno, ten years snitching out The Family, but in a kind of wink-wink way, my boss in Chicago used him to get rid of people, so it was like he was a sanctioned gossip, probably saved some lives in the process since if Bruno snitched you out, that meant the cops were gonna roll you up and that was that. He decides to get out, ends up moving out of state, gets a new job, nothing flashy, FBI is supposed to be protecting him, I guess. Lost track of him for a few years. I thought, good, maybe he’s happy. Last time I saw him, he was dropped off at the mortuary without fucking eyelids. And this is a guy they liked. What the fuck do you think they’d do to you?”
“I’ve got something bigger to give up,” Rachel said, which meant, of course: him.
“You do this, Las Vegas is done to you. Your father? He is done to you. As soon as you go to the feds, you belong to them, forever.”
Rachel flicked her cigarette out into the darkness. Lit up another one. Sal assumed that was her way of saying, Maybe I hadn’t thought that part through.
“You flip when Bennie’s in treatment, they are going to pluck him out of there, toss him into a prison. This will not be a bail situation. If he’s lucky, he’ll have enough federal crimes on his docket that he might, maybe, get into a federal prison hospital, but I wouldn’t guess they’ll go light on him. And whatever information you give the feds to get Bennie jammed up? If it’s so good as to put you into protective custody, it’s good enough to have him shanked in the showers. Then they’ll find you. You won’t see fifty.”
