Empty Ever After (19 page)

Given his fanatical rantings against assimilation, there was a kind of perverse symmetry in his latest incarnation. Judas Wannsee had gone from the ultimate outsider and gadfly to faceless bureaucrat, from messianic to mundane, from bright yellow stars to grays and inspection stickers. The Department of Motor Vehicles office on Route 112 in Medford on Long Island was the perfect physical manifestation of the anonymous new life Wannsee had chosen for himself. It was tucked neatly into the corner of one of the gazillion strip malls and shopping centers that scarred the island. Long Island had been transformed from a place of endless trees and beaches to a land of ugly, mind-numbing repetition. Deli. Chinese take-out. Dojo. Pizzeria. Card store. Phone store. Deli. Chinese take-out. Dojo. Card store. Phone store. Deli. Chinese take-out …

As I stood on the information line and listened to the beige woman at the desk endlessly repeat
How can I help you?
I had to snicker. There were several layers of irony in Judas Wannsee’s transformation.

“Yes,” I said, “I’d like to speak to your supervisor, please.”

“What’s this in reference to?”

“Just tell him it’s about Bungalow number eight. He’ll understand.”

She hesitated and shook her head. Apparently, this situation had not been covered in
Information Desk 101
, so she handled it as she would if I’d come in to surrender some old license plates. She hit a button that generated a white numbered chit—A 322—and handed it to me.

“Take a seat.
Next!
”

I did as she asked, taking a seat on a long pew. The pews faced numbered stations where bored-looking clerks did what clerks do. The pews also faced big electronic boards that posted chit numbers and stations in red lights:

F121 12

D453 10

A320 08

And whenever new numbers were posted, a bell would ring. The place seemed to have been designed by a bingo-playing priest heavily influenced by Pavlov. A322 12 flashed up on the screen quickly enough. The woman at window 12 directed me to walk over to a door. When I reached it, she buzzed me in.

“Down the hall,” she yelled to me as I closed the door behind me.

The man I had known as Judas Wannsee sat behind a metal desk, shuffling and scribbling on papers. The walls were white and blank except for the mandatory notices about sexual harassment, emergency procedures, and handwashing when leaving the rest rooms. They were devoid of pictures, posters, of anything that might have given a visitor insight into the man who occupied the office. He was twenty years older and it showed. He had thinned, as had his hair. He was stooped somewhat and gravity had taken its toll on his face, but the eyes still burned bright.

“Mr. Prager,” he said without looking up. “Bungalow number eight, indeed.”

I knew he would remember. Bungalow 8 was where Karen Rosen had spent her last days, where we spoke that final time.

“I figured it was better than asking for Judas Wannsee or throwing a felt star on the counter.”

“I suppose,” he said, rubbing his chin. “Or you might simply have asked for Howard Bland. But no, as I recall, the simple way was not your way. You have a weakness for the dramatic turn. Please sit.”

I sat.

“How did you find me?” he asked.

“I’m a detective.”

“Lost is what you are, Mr. Prager. You always have been and I sense you will always be so.”

That stung some. I didn’t try to hide it. “And you’re a hypocrite. What happened to all your speeches about not fitting in and showing yourself to the world as a Jew as a black man shows the world he is black? Look where you are now. You’re a glorified clerk: faceless, pointless, invisible. Polonius too was full of high sentence, but at least he moved the plot along.”

“The lost detective … who quotes from Prufrock, no less.”

The less I liked his attitude, the more I liked him for what had happened to Katy.

“I was paraphrasing, not quoting.”

“Polonius? I think not. My speeches are like the soft tissue of dinosaurs, lost to history.”

“Talk about a flare for the dramatic. Besides, that’s no answer.”

“And why should I be obliged to answer your questions at all?”

I suppose I could have grabbed him by the collar and twisted. It might have given me some short-term satisfaction, but would’ve ultimately proven counterproductive.

“You’re not obliged, but I might tell you how I tracked you down if you cooperate.”

“You know, Mr. Prager, upon brief reflection, I find I’m not really so interested in how you found me. In fact, maybe how is beside the point. Let me ask, why?”

Again, I had a choice. I chose the non-violent option and explained. He never took his eyes off me as I spoke. He still had that ability to make you feel as if he could see right into you, into the darkest places, places where you stored your most shameful thoughts and unshared secrets. I was convinced he could detect the slightest hint of pose or artifice. When I finished, he considered what I had said before speaking. He still had it, the charisma. A lot of people want it. Some think they have it and don’t. He had it in abundance.

“I can understand why you might have suspected me,” he said, “but I’m sorry to disappoint you. I have nothing to do with the crimes perpetrated against your family.”

I didn’t want to believe him, yet I did, instantly. “Fair enough.”

“I was quite piqued at you there for a time, I must confess. Your stumbling onto Karen did disrupt things for me. The group went on, even grew larger. I still believed in what I preached, but your presence caused me to have to look beyond my own belief system and motivations and to examine more carefully those who would follow my lead or, like Karen, seek refuge with us. You’d planted the seed. You see, I began the group
because I believed in a set of values, not because I had a need to lead or a lust for power. Leadership and power are onerous, heavy yokes, not pleasures. Yet they were burdens I was glad to take on if it helped the misguided Jews of this great country.

“ What I discovered, Mr. Prager, was that you could worship watermelon pits or sacks of gray pebbles or anything else for that matter and people would follow. Sadly, the world is populated by a lot of lonely, hungry, and lost souls. They all want to belong, to be loved, to be fed, to be anchored. Beliefs, unfortunately, are cold cold things. They give no comfort, no acceptance, no sustenance. Only other people can minister to those needs. Beliefs may inspire the founding of a group, but yearnings are the fuel that drives its growth engine. After years of self-exploration, of denial, and of rationalization, I knew what I had to do.

“I had already made my initial journey and come out the other side. I was a proud Jew by the time you and I had met that first time. I realized that if the group had true strength, it would survive and prosper without me at its center. If, however, I left and it collapsed, then my cause was folly. In the end, my decision to leave was set in motion by Karen’s impending death and your arrival, Mr. Prager. It took me years to build a new identity into which Judas Wannsee might vanish. Even then, it wasn’t as easy to let go as you might expect. No man wants to feel that what he’s lived for has all been an illusion, a heat mirage on the asphalt in summer. Yet, eventually, Judas Wannsee faded slowly into the backdrop. So you see, I owe you not antipathy, but thanks. Just as my brother soldiers had inspired my first journey of self-exploration, you sparked my second.”

“But this …” I said, gesturing at the generic office. “Why the anonymity?”

“My first journey required the participation of others. I needed the rest of the world to react to my declarations of proud Judaism. The star, the tattoo, the pajamas, the name were all props meant to elicit responses. My growth, my self-discovery was a function of my reactions to those responses. And by confronting that daily friction, I was conditioning myself out of the shame and self-hatred of the assimilated Jew.

“This second journey has been a purely internal and personal struggle: Could I sustain my transformation without the participation of another soul? Could I be a proud Jew even if the rest of the world didn’t know I existed? Could I remain unassimilated in the midst of utter assimilation? We have all heard the cliché, ‘What a man believes in his heart, is what matters.’ That was what I needed to discover, what I believed in my heart. For this question to be answered, I needed to remove all external things from my life that might serve to give me reinforcement, that might elicit
response. Until the moment you walked through my office door, I had been remarkably successful.”

“Hasn’t it been long enough for you to get your answer?”

“Yes and no, Mr. Prager. What I have come to realize is that the answer requires one last journey. At the instant of my death, I will know for sure.”

“A little late in the game, don’t you think?”

“It’s always late in the game for everyone. We’re all of us on several journeys at once, different journeys, yes, but we all get the answer to the same question at the same time. I am ready for that answer whenever it may come.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Bland.” I nodded, standing. “Be well.”

“And you, Mr. Prager. Although there is great value in being lost, try and find something in the meantime. There is no shame in comfort.”

As I walked back down the hallway toward the bingo parlor, his words rang in my head. Just as his words had stayed with me for the last twenty years, these would stay with me until the day I died. But unlike Mr. Bland nee Wannsee, I was not ready for that answer, whatever it was and whomever its deliverer might be.

Right now I had to focus on closing chapters in my life. And with the exception of Judas Wannsee, all the significant people connected to my time in the Catskills were dead. Karen Rosen and Andrea Cotter, my high school crush, were gone. Everyone from R.B. Carter—Andrea Cotter’s billionaire brother—to Anton Harder—the leader of the white supremacists—was gone.

Closing chapters, that’s what I was trying to do now, at least until I could think of a more inspired approach. When I was done reconciling the books, I’d take a look at the landscape and see who remained standing. One of them would be the man or woman behind the grave desecrations and the appearance of Patrick Michael Maloney’s ghost. And since I was already on Long Island, I decided to make one more stop. It would no doubt be an unpleasant one.

 

A MIDDLE-CLASS hamlet with pretentions, Great River was tucked neatly between East Islip and Oakdale on Long Island’s south shore. For many years Great River had resisted the Gaudy-is-Great infection spreading wildly across the rest of the island, but just lately its ability to fend off the disease had weakened. Acre lots that had once sported comfortable colonials and solid split ranches had begun sprouting giant “statement” houses, beasts that featured design elements from styles as disparate as Bauhaus and French Provincial. But the house that had to
have won the Good Housekeeping’s seal of disapproval boasted minarets, a faux moat, and scale model marble mailbox sculpted like the
Pieta
. In place of Michelangelo’s name, it read—in gold leaf I might add—Mr. Michael Angelos and Family. Visitors to the home were probably confused as to whether they should purchase a theme park pass or prayer cards.

A little further on, I turned right before the gates of Timber Point Country Club and parked across from the expanded L-shaped ranch that I’d visited once, eleven years earlier. The Martello house looked much the same now as it had then, but things had changed. Currently, the house belonged to Raymond Martello Jr., a Suffolk County Police sergeant. The house had once belonged to his dad. The father had been a cop too, NYPD, the captain in command of the 60th Precinct: my old house in Coney Island. I was ten years off the job by the time he was posted to the Six-O. Ray Sr. and me might not have known each other as cops, but we made up for lost time and got real well acquainted back in the late ’80s.

I strolled across the street to talk to the tanned, shirtless man kneeling to adjust an in-ground sprinkler head on his front lawn.

“You Ray Jr.?” I asked.

“Why? Who wants to know?”

“No fair. You asked two questions. I only asked one.”

He stopped what he was doing, gazed up at me, and got to his feet. Whereas Ray Martello Sr. had been a small, compact man, this guy was eye to eye with me. He was square-shouldered and ripped. He did the cop thing of getting in close to me—his nose nearly touching mine—and staring through me. He was checking me out and trying to intimidate me all at once. A sly, arrogant smile worked its way onto his face. I figured him for Martello’s kid. Had to be. Had the father’s looks and the same impudent style. I was feeling guilty about trying to get a rise out of him until I saw that fucking smile.

I noticed some rather intricate and unusually colored tattoos on his forearms, biceps, and delts. There were a series of Chinese characters on his left forearm done in bright red, not the usual dull blue. Both biceps were encircled by bands of blue-green barbed wire highlighted with that same bright red, but the tat that caught my attention was on his right delt. It was the head of a Peregrine falcon done in vibrant shades of black, dark and light brown, off-white, and hints of blue. The yellow around the beak and eyes was so real, I could almost imagine pricking my finger on the tip of its hooked bill. I shifted position slightly and observed that the falcon’s body and talons continued down his back. Here the work was even more skillfully executed, as the dappling on the bird’s belly, the texture of its feathers and the blending of shades was
like nothing I’d ever seen. Well … that wasn’t true. I had recently seen something very much like it.

“Cop?” he asked, confident of my answer.

“Used to be. In the city. Nice ink work. Where’d you get it done?”

“Thanks.” He pointed to his forearm, then his bicep. “These here I got in A.C.”