The Righteous Men (2006) (23 page)

Will did as he was told, before TC nudged him aside and shared the seat with
him, so that their bodies touched from their knees to their shoulders. She
grabbed the keyboard and began two-finger typing furiously.

I am on to you. I know you must be
guilty of what happened in Bangkok because I know you are doing the same here
in New York. I plan to go to the police and tell them what I know. That will
implicate you in at least two very serious crimes, to say nothing of your assault
and false imprisonment of me. You have till nine pm tonight to give me my wife
back. Otherwise I talk.

Will read the words twice over, stopping once to look at TC whose face
stayed fixed on the computer screen. Her profile was just inches away from his,
a minute diamond stud sparkling in her nose. He had seen this face from this
angle so many times before; it seemed strange not to be kissing it.

‘Christ,’ he said eventually. ‘That’s pretty strong.’
He wondered if it was too explicit, mentioning his treatment the previous
night. He remembered a slew of recent trials, in the US and in Britain, where
journalists’ emails had been produced. What would they make of this one,
issuing direct threats and proposing obstruction of justice — and all
from a
New York Times
address? Fuck it, was all he could think. His wife
was in dire danger; anything was permitted. TC’s note was sharp and hit
the target directly. He was about to press Send when something caught his eye.

‘Why till nine pm? Why’s that the deadline?’

‘They might not read this till after the Sabbath is finished; we’ve
got to give them time to reply.’

The insanity of the situation had not faded with time. The notion of pious
killers, happy to murder but queasy about turning on a computer before the
appointed hour was too bizarre for Will to get used to. TC had explained that
the Sabbath did not officially conclude until a specific minute on Saturday
evening. Nothing so imprecise as ‘sunset’ or ‘once it’s
dark’. It was 7.42pm. If you did not have a watch, you could check by
looking outside your window: tradition held that once you could see three
stars, you knew the Sabbath was over and the normal working week had resumed.

Will had no idea how the Hassidim would respond. TC had moved so fast, her
desire for action meshing perfectly with his fury at the kidnappers who, he now
knew, were capable of murder, that he had barely thought through the
consequences of what they had just done. Surely these were strange,
unpredictable people; who knew how they would react? Will’s tone of angry
defiance might push them over the edge: they could decide this was provocation
enough to finish Beth off. They could kill her and it would be his fault
— for following the whim of, of all people, his ex-girlfriend. He
imagined the pain of future years, learning to live with such a weight of guilt.

And yet, what had he got to lose? Playing nice had brought no results. He
had to get their attention, force them to realize that there would be a price
to pay for killing Beth. This email told them they needed his silence — and
that they should spare her life to buy it.

Besides, it felt good to be fighting back. He recalled how he had felt the
previous evening, when he immersed himself in the warm water of the pre-sabbath
mikve
as Sandy stood close by. He had been ashamed of his nakedness, his
willingness to strip himself bare to ingratiate himself with men whom he should
have fought as enemies. Well, now he was clothed and pulling himself up to his
full height and taking them on. With this message, he was fighting for his wife
and acting like a man.

He pressed
Send
.

‘Good,’ said TC, giving Will’s thigh a firm squeeze. ‘Good
job.’

TC’s elation was infectious; for Will it translated into relief. He
had done something at last; he had made his move.

The urge to fall into one of the cafe’s roomy armchairs was strong;
Will was exhausted. But TC was already chivvying him to get up and out. She was
not just edgy, Will realized; she was making a calculation. Of course. TC was
worried that Will himself could be a target for the Hassidim. If she had had
her initial doubts, now she was convinced: the men of Crown Heights were not to
be messed around. It was the news from Bangkok that converted her. Once a
sceptic, she was now a believer.

As they left, Will’s mobile stirred. He waited till they were outside
before he even looked at it: DadHome. Poor guy, he’d been calling for
hours and Will had not sent him so much as a text message.

‘Hello?’

‘Thank God for that. Oh Will, I’ve been worried sick.’

‘I’m fine. I’m exhausted, but I’m OK.’

‘What the hell’s been happening? I’ve wanted so much to call
the police, but didn’t dare until you and I at least had a chance to
talk. Really, Will, I was this close — but I held off.

It’s such a relief to hear your voice.’

‘You haven’t told anyone have you? Dad?’

‘Of course I haven’t. But I’ve wanted to. Just tell me,
have you heard from Beth?’

‘No. But I know where she is and I know who’s got her.’

TC was gesturing at Will’s phone, then wagging her finger across her
face like a school mistress. Will got the message.

‘Dad, maybe we should talk about this when I’m on a landline.
Can I call you later?’

‘No, you have to tell me now! I’m going out of my mind here.
Where is she?’

‘She’s in New York. She’s in Brooklyn.’

Will instantly regretted his revelation. Cell phones were notoriously leaky:
he knew that much from the scanners on the Metro desk, where police radio
transmissions were easier to get than NPR. For those who knew how, plucking
cellular calls out of the air was a breeze.

‘But, Dad, I’m serious. There can be no vigilante rescue attempts
here. No calls to the police commissioner who you knew at Yale. I mean it: that
would truly fuck everything up and could cost Beth her life.’ His voice
was wobbling. Will could not tell if he was about to scream at his father or
break down and cry. ‘Promise me, Dad. You’re not going to do anything.
Promise.’

His father gave a reply but Will could not hear it. A word went missing,
drowned out by the sound of a beep on the line.

‘OK, Dad, I’m going to say goodbye. We’ll speak later.’

There was no time for niceties; he needed his father off the line so he
could take this incoming call.

Will pressed the buttons as. fast as he could, his thumbs trembling with
tiredness, but there was no call. The beep he had heard had announced instead
the arrival of a text message.

Will could feel TC leaning on his upper arm, straining to see his phone as
they stood together on the street.

‘
Read message?
’ the phone asked dumbly.
Of course I
want to read it, idiot!
Will hit the Yes button, but found the keypad was
locked. Damn. More buttons to press, forcing him to go the long way around,
choosing text messages then his inbox, then a long wait while the display
promised that it was ‘opening folder’. Finally, the message
appeared: five words, short, simple — and utterly mysterious.

2 down: Moses to Bond

Now that TC had broken the code, this message was not baffling
— he knew it would be solved within a few moments — but it was
frightening. This string of nonsense might be about to tell him anything. What
if one of those words translated as Beth?

TC grabbed the phone and began punching numbers, only to stop suddenly. ‘2
could be A or B or C. But the only alternative for “down” is “down”.
It must be a different system.’

‘It’s a crossword clue.’

‘What?’

‘2 Down. You know, 4 Across, 3 Down. It’s a crossword clue.’

‘All right. So what’s moses to bond? It implies some sort of
motion: we’re meant to take Moses to Bond somehow. But what the hell is
Bond anyway?’

‘James Bond? Could be a number. You know, 007.’ TC looked blank.
‘Maybe it’s two down from seven. Which would be five.’

‘Which could be the five books of Moses. But that’s not much of
a clue. Listen, I’m cold.’ They were still standing on the street. ‘There.’
She pointed at a McDonalds.

With a bacon breakfast bun in one hand and a pencil in
the other, TC was scribbling — combinations of letters and numbers.

‘What about Bond Street?’ said Will, pacing around her.

‘Take Moses to Bond Street?’

TC looked up at Will, her eyebrows raised.

‘OK, OK.’

‘Let’s think this through,’ she said, scoring a long line through
everything she had written down. ‘What did you say in your reply to him?’
Will, his mouth now full, froze just as his hands were about to claw a clump of
fries. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I meant to. I was about to. But then we heard the news from Bangkok
and everything got forgotten.’

Will was almost waiting for TC to pick him up on that lapse into what she
used to call the cowardly passive. ‘Everything got forgotten,’ was
the cowardly way of saying that Will himself had forgotten. (TC coined the term
in honour of an old flatmate who, despairing at the state of the kitchen they shared,
but too meek to accuse TC directly, announced, ‘Dishes have been left.’
Hence, and thereafter, the cowardly passive.) That thought brought back a
memory Will had not dredged up for years: the alternative grammar he and TC had
devised to reflect the way language was really used, the way emotions really
worked. There was, of course, the passive aggressive and, Will’s
favourite, the past too-perfect, deployed by those consumed with nostalgia. The
pressure caused by gift-giving, particularly pronounced at Christmas, was,
inevitably, present tension. We must have been so obnoxious, thought Will now,
reconstructing in his mind the world of smart-aleck, private jokes that he and TC
had once inhabited together.

‘Well, that makes this even more intriguing,’ TC said, letting Will
off despite his error. ‘It’s not a reply. It’s a second
message, sent voluntarily. It suggests Yosef Yitzhok felt a degree of urgency:
two messages in one morning.’

‘The first one could have been last night. But, OK. Why would this be
urgent?

‘I don’t know.’ TC’s voice had dropped; she was
distracted.

She had grabbed Will’s phone back and was staring at it, taking
occasional slurps from her chocolate shake without once breaking her gaze. She
broke from the meditation only to murmur, ‘He was in a hurry.’ She
began tapping the keypad, then scribbling, then tapping again. A small smile of
satisfaction, followed by a crinkled brow.

There
. She shoved the sheet of paper across the table.

TWO DOWN. MORE’S TO COME.

They both stared in silence, the pleasure derived from the act of decoding
now giving way to the pain of further bemusement.

‘He’s playing games with us,’ said Will. ‘“Right,
you’ve deciphered two of my messages; I’ll send more”. So
long as we do … what?’

‘We need to let him know we understand, but we need more information.
We don’t want to piss him off. If he’s trying to help, we need to
keep him happy. Send a message back.’

Will took the phone, glancing up at TC with eyes that said, ‘I hope
you’re right about this.’

Thank you. I won’t stop. And I want to hear more. Can you tell me
anything? Please.

All they could do now was wait. TC was convinced that McDonalds made a
sufficiently anonymous hiding place. Will suspected there was another motive: TC
did not want Will in her home.

But they had to wait somewhere. If the Hassidim were not going to reply till
sundown, or when the three stars appeared, or whatever way these jokers had of
telling the time, there was nothing else to do — save waiting for Yosef
Yitzhok to give them another tantalizing, veiled message.

It came nearly an hour later, at first sight as nonsensical as the others.

Wet nose debugs room

This time Will pressed the buttons, jotting the results instantly onto his
pad. By the time he got to the third word he felt his stomach churn. TC was
craning to look and once she saw the notepad, she gasped.

Yet more deaths soon

E
veryone was either staring at
them directly or pretending not to look. TC was attempting to calm Will who had
just pounded the table and then thrown a cup of coffee at the wall. A cleaner
had appeared with a mop.

‘We’ve got to try and think straight,’ TC was saying.

‘How can I think straight? It’s a fucking death threat.’

‘He might be trying to warn us.’

‘Warn us? He’s saying they’re going to kill Beth.’
Will looked up, his eyes red.

The phone buzzed again. TC grabbed it first, before Will had a chance. For
the first time, a straight sentence.

He who hesitates is lost

TC looked at it for only a second, before trying out the text alternative.
It made no sense. No, she concluded, this was a different kind of clue. Maybe
it was not even a clue. Perhaps it was merely a warning. Hurry, there is no
time to waste. She turned the display to Will for his inspection. It somehow
calmed him: there was no direct menace here. It sounded more like a call to
action.

TC peered at it a while, then wrote it down on the top page of her
sketchpad, just below the first three messages. Will saw that she had neatly
written the first, coded version on the left and then the second, deciphered
one on the right. For an instant, Will imagined TC at school: the kind of girl who
always kept a clean, well-stocked pencil case.

While TC chewed her pen and did her best to stare the latest riddle into
submission, Will tried to while away the afternoon. He picked at junk food, bit
his nails, drummed his fingers on the table; tried reading the paper but could
not concentrate. He could hear a couple arguing. ‘I don’t believe you,’
the woman was saying to the man. The instant he heard the words, he sat bolt
upright, remembering that night in the Carnegie Deli. Beth had said a beautiful
sentence to him without irony, even if he had tried to pierce the moment with a
joke. ‘I believe in you and me,’ she had said. He suddenly wished
he had repeated the words back to Beth. For it was true. She was his faith.