The Blood Lie (6 page)

“Come along, Martha,” Mrs. Pool said, taking the good cloth off the dining table and folding it. “We'll check on the chickens before we make the almond bread.”

“I'll check on them, Mama,” Harry volunteered. Anything not to be sent back to kitchen duty.

“Fine.” She laid the linens aside. “Jack, you can peel that basket of potatoes sitting in the sink.”

“Can't I practice a little first—for just a few minutes?” he asked.

Jack could feel Harry bracing to protest if their mother caved to Jack. So when she winked her okay, he raced upstairs before Harry could open his mouth.

“So what's all the secrecy?” Victor asked once he and Gus got into the police car in front of the Durham's house.

“I'll tell you flat out,” Gus said. “It's time you knew. This girl who disappeared, it's the Jews.” His lips curled as if the very word tasted bitter.

“The Jews?”

“They have strange customs for their holidays. Terrible customs. They use blood. Drink it and bake it in their special foods. Blood of a Christian child, not one of their own. One of their big holidays is in a couple days, see. They call it Yon Kippur or something. That's why they took Daisy. I just hope they didn't murder her yet, that they're holding onto her till their big day. If you move fast enough, you might save her.”

Victor's eyes narrowed, and he started twiddling his mustache. “What makes you so sure about this?”

“One of them Jews came into the diner a few minutes ago and couldn't keep his mouth shut. Kept dropping hints. Like he felt guilty and needed to talk. I put two and two together, that's all.”

Victor gripped the steering wheel.

“Stop futzing with them woods for a kid who isn't even there,” Gus persisted. “Listen to me. I'm telling you the truth. I know what goes on in this town—I hear everything every day at the diner. It's those Jews that—”

“
God
—” Victor muttered, shaking his head.

“Wha' you say? You know something?”

“I know what I've seen. I know my pap used to make
good dough selling groceries. Had his own storefront on the East side of Buffalo. Then the kikes moved in. Set up shops all along Main Street. Kept jewing down the price of things, smiling all the while, till my poor pap couldn't make a living, couldn't even make rent on the joint. Landlord gave him the bum's rush. Just like that, out on the street, all on account of those bohunks. Been driving a bus ever since.”

“Might've been the sheeny curse, to boot,” Gus said. “I hear if they raise their skullcap at you, it unleashes the curse, the curse of going flat broke. Maybe that happened to your pap.”

“It was right around this same time of year,” Victor went on. “Yeah, right around this same time, 'cause I was just starting at St. Agnes Academy for Boys by then—autumn. We got to school one morning, found out the chapel was broke into the night before. And what do you suppose was missing—the fancy candleholders or the pricey linens? No, the host, that's what. Those dirty Jews stole the host!”

“Sick, just plain sick.”

“Hell, it don't seem like nothing compared to this.
Jeezus
, human sacrifice, in this modern day and age…but—you know, the widow Durham, she thinks the girl just lost her way in the woods.”

“That's hooey. She's not thinking straight.”

“So, this Jew you talked to, this—what'd you say the man's name is?”

“It's a kid. His name is Pool. Jack Pool, Pool's Dry Goods,” Gus said.

“Did he say where they got her?”

“Couldn't get that much out of him. But listen, their stores are already closed for the holiday, locked up, black as night.
Wouldn't you say that was convenient if you have a child—or her body—to hide?”

Victor turned the steering wheel as far as it would go in both directions, then sat back into his seat, rubbing the wiry hairs of his mustache. “Okay, look, tell me
exactly
what this kid said.”

Gus licked his lips, thinking about the whiskey coming his way, about how it would tingle in his mouth and burn his throat tonight when he toasted his latest stash with Royman.

“Well, the diner was slow tonight—probably because everyone was out hunting for Daisy. I was thinking about closing up early but decided to stay open and give out coffee and pie to the search parties. So there I was, standing at the counter talking to Roy Royman about how they couldn't find the poor little girl—this was no more than an hour ago—and in walks this Jack Pool. Jack scrambled-eggs-and-toast Pool. Orders it every time. Never a real meal. It's the Jew way, see. They won't eat any meat their preacher doesn't kill personally. Now Chuck Smith—he runs the Sunflower—he makes them Jew-pies using Crisco for shortening. I hear he even plays pinochle with them, lets them—”

“So—?”

“Right. Anyways, when Jack bellies up to the counter tonight, I chat with him, see, being friendly like I am with all my customers. ‘What's new?' I ask him. That's when he tells me about this holiday of theirs coming up. I get him his silverware and a glass of water. ‘You hear about the Durham girl?' I say. He doesn't say a word, but goes pale as a sheet. Then he starts twisting his napkin over and over like he's strangling it. And right then, that's when I remembered something my
grandmother in Salonika used to tell me. Every time I'd leave the house, she'd warn me, ‘Watch where you walk. Them Jews are all born blind and need blood to be able to see.' The Pool boy, his father is blind—you follow? So it was all beginning to make sense to me. You see how it makes sense?”

Victor took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. He nodded slowly.

“You ever dealt with a missing child before?” Gus asked.

“Nope.”

“Bet the big guys at HQ'd think you're the cat's pajamas if you solved this one.”

“Or a chump if I botch it.”

“Then here's the part you really need to understand, Victor.” He fingered the fresh cigar in his pocket. “These Jews always leave the body where people will find it and be afraid. So even if Daisy's already dead, she's not under some rock in the middle of the woods. They're gonna do whatever they're gonna do to her, and then, after their holiday's done, they're gonna dump her somewhere obvious. And you're gonna look like a fool for not noticing her there, guaranteed.”

“
Jeezus!
Looks like Billy Moore got out of this hell-hole in the nick of time. All right, where does this Pool kid live? I'm gonna have myself a little talk with him.”

“Right around the block, just off Maple. Big grey job. You can't miss it.”

Victor put the key into the ignition. “Don't breathe a word of this to anyone, Gus. I mean it.”

Gus stepped out of the car. “Hell no,” he said. “Tell you what, though. When the search parties come around the diner, I'll let them know the woods ain't the focus anymore. I'll say…
the case is under control now, and the trooper will get the word out if he needs any more help. How's that?”

“
You're the cream in my coffee, you're the salt in my stew.
” Jack sat on the edge of his bunk, singing the popular song and accompanying himself on the cello. “
You will always be my necess-i-ty, I'd be lost without you.
”

He'd just spent a dreamy hour practicing his audition piece, a Vivaldi concerto, all the time imagining himself playing first chair with the New York Philharmonic, sounding just like the records he listened to on the Victrola—rich, deep, like liquid chocolate.

“
All alone, I'm so all alone,
” he crooned. “
There is no one else but you. All alone by the telephone waiting for a ring, a ting-a-ling.
” At the Bentley School, he'd be able to study and perform both classical and pop music, and that, he figured, would up his chances of turning a dream into a career. Performer, composer, teacher—or maybe all three—he didn't know. All he knew was that music was as natural and necessary to him as breathing.

Jack put away his cello and picked up his
shofar.
Rabbi Abrams had chosen him to blow the ram's horn, the most ancient of Jewish musical instruments, this year at Yom Kippur services, and he wanted to sound good. This would be, after all, a performance of sorts. The ridges of the curved horn fit well in his hands as he forced air into the rim to produce the powerful blasts. He sounded several short notes and then the longest one he could hold.

Yom Kippur services were long. Some people would come and go, especially the ones with small children, but Jack would
stay. The only time he'd leave the building would be for
Yizkor
, the special prayer of remembrance for people who'd lost a loved one. Those lucky enough to have intact families waited outside the temple doors. Both of Jack's parents stayed inside. So did Jack's friend Abe Goldberg. Meanwhile, everyone waiting outside knew that one day they'd move inside to recite the
Yizkor
prayer, and that sometime later, the prayer would be said for them.

When Jack released the last note, he sat up and stared out his window. He could see the Main Street Bridge standing vigil over the St. Lawrence, which, in another few miles, would enter Canada on its journey east to the Atlantic. He thought about his father's voyage along this waterway on his way to America. Mr. Pool said it was the coldest weather he'd ever known—January in Quebec—and that the ferrymen showed him how to test the temperature. “Go outside and spit,” they'd said. “If it freezes the second it hits the ground, then it's twenty below. But if it freezes in midair, then it's at least forty below. Either way, the ferries don't run.”

If only Mr. Pool had entered America through Ellis Island like thousands of others, his family would probably be living in Brooklyn or Boston or some other city. Then Jack would have music schools at his fingertips, and concerts and sheet music shops. But Mr. Pool's poor vision prevented all that. When he immigrated, people were so afraid of trachoma—a contagious, blinding disease—that if your eyes didn't seem quite right, you could be standing right next to the Statue of Liberty and still get sent back to your homeland. So he didn't risk it. He came in through Canada instead, first to Montreal, then across the St. Lawrence to Northern New York State.

Jack cursed his father's eyes.

And yet, if he had been able to see, Mr. Pool might not have come to America at all. He might have stayed in his
shtetl
—Zininka, one of the many Russian ghettos where the Jews were forced to live but were forbidden from owning land, attending school, or practicing the more profitable trades. He might have endured the empty belly, the isolation, the encroaching violence against the Jews. But word had it that American doctors could restore eyesight. Jack's father could live without food or security, but he desperately, urgently wanted to see. And so he came.

Of course he came. Who wouldn't, if it meant being able to see clearly for the first time? Jack thought the only thing worse than blindness would be deafness, because then there'd be no music. Having no music would be like having no language, no passion, no inspiration. He couldn't bear the thought.

When Mr. Pool found out that the American cure didn't exist, there was only one thing left to do: he threw on a shoulder pack and walked from town to town, peddling notions and a little clothing. “Lucky for me I can weigh the difference between a five-spot and a ten in my hands,” he'd joke. After a couple of years he bought a horse and wagon so he could travel farther, and that's how he met his future wife in Santa Clara.

When Jack's parents opened Pool's Dry Goods, Massena was enjoying the tail end of an odd sort of heyday—thanks to its stinking water, of all things. The Mohawks had discovered a sulfur-water spring at the edge of town just after the War Between the States, and people believed it could cure a slew of conditions. Visitors started coming from all over the country,
as well as from Canada and Europe. Even the Netherlands' Queen Wilhelmina, who supposedly had a bad case of eczema, made a point of stopping by during one of her U.S. visits.