“What does that mean, David?”
“Can I tell you a secret?” David asked.
“I am your rabbi,” Rabbi Kales said, “and I have profound dementia, so I think you should be fine.”
David explained the existence of Matthew Drew to the rabbi, how he ended up beside David’s hospital bed, how they entered into a de facto partnership to find Sal’s family and save each other’s hides.
“When was the last time you spoke with this man?”
“A week ago.”
Rabbi Kales fingered the Star of David he wore around his neck. “David, this man, Benjamin doesn’t know of him?” There was a tinge of worry in Rabbi Kales’s voice.
“No,” David said.
“Does he know of him in principle? As a person wanted by the FBI?”
“Maybe,” David said. “All this shit went down with Matthew, Bennie was in lockup or under house arrest. Don’t know if he was paying close attention.”
“He will kill you,” Rabbi Kales said. “This deal promises his demise, David. You must see that. It promises all of our demise.”
“You don’t think I know that?” David said. “Trouble comes, trouble goes. I have no problem not keeping my word to him.”
“It’s beyond your control now.” Rabbi Kales got up from the couch. “Come with me.”
“SIT,” RABBI KALES SAID. THEY WERE IN THE SMALL LIVING ROOM, THE anchor on CNN going over the weather. It was a minute before nine o’clock. “Watch. Do not change the channel.”
Rabbi Kales stepped into his kitchen. David could hear him putting water into a kettle. At the turn of the hour, CNN led off with an update on the terrorist attack in Las Vegas, a woman in a CNN windbreaker standing across the street from the Commercial Center, an N95 over her face. “Sources tell CNN,” she said, “that fingers are beginning to point away from an Al-Qaeda cell to a possible lone-wolf attack. Is it possible one man could do this much damage?” The mayor came on. Said Las Vegas would rebound and come back even stronger. Siegfried and Roy were interviewed. Talked about the indomitable spirit of the people of Clark County.
There was a segment about a Chinese airplane crash, killing 128 people aboard, and then something about an old Hollywood star getting arrested for murdering his wife, and then, “A strange story out of California, where one of the FBI’s most wanted was brought to justice by his former boss. Kai Amberg from our sister station KESQ in Palm Springs reports from the Salton Sea.”
The teakettle whistled.
It was 9:07 p.m.
Rabbi Kales set down his tea service at the very moment Matthew Drew, his body covered in a white sheet, was pushed into the back of the coroner’s van.
“Matthew Drew has lived for the last several months on the FBI’s Most Wanted list,” Kai Amberg said. “Until today, when he tried to ambush mining executive and former FBI station chief Kirk Biglione at what was once a popular tourist spot along the shores of the Salton Sea . . .”
“How long have you known about this?” David asked. Kirk Biglione was on the screen now, his shirt spattered in blood.
“It has been on the news all afternoon and evening.”
Kirk Biglione said, “I knew how dangerous Matthew Drew was; I trained him myself.”
“Did you tell Rachel?”
“No.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me.”
“I only speak babble to my daughter,” Rabbi Kales said.
“Did you know he was out here?”
“No, no, of course not. But I knew he was connected to you. That he supposedly killed your cousin’s family.”
“And so you looked into him.”
“I kept abreast,” Rabbi Kales said.
How closely were the feds monitoring Matthew Drew on the internet? Were they pinging on searches of him from Las Vegas? Were they triangulating him?
Probably not.
Not while they were so busy not finding Bin Laden.
On the screen, Kirk Biglione was talking about how this assault went all the way to the ganglands of Chicago, David waiting now, sure he’d hear it, and then, there it was: “This man might have been working with Sal Cupertine, for all we know.” And then there he was, the same fucking photo they’d been using for years—waiting in line at Subway in Chicago, picking up lunch for Jennifer and William, getting himself a tuna sandwich, as he recalled—and his Chicago driver’s license. He was mostly a smudge in a trench coat in the Subway photo, a still from their black-and-white security cameras, but it showed his full height up against the door, which was important since his driver’s license said he was only five foot seven, Sal never changing it from when he was sixteen, a good joke that turned into a good diversion. He was thirty in his driver’s license photo. Ten years ago.
“Would you know that’s me?” David asked.
“No,” Rabbi Kales said.
David clicked over to Headline News. Waited. Then: his face. MSNBC. Fox. His face.
Shit.
This wasn’t local news.
