way his father had behaved his entire life. He tapped a cigarette out of his pack and lit it. His hands were shaking and the smoke failed to calm him.
“You didn’t know he was too preoccupied to see you?” Zohar said. “I’m sorry.”
Stone did all he could not to respond, channeling the strength and will of his father, but he could not restrain himself. “You’re lying.”
“So now we have a dialogue,” Zohar said, smiling. “This is progress.”
“I’m not saying another word.”
“It would explain a lot, wouldn’t it? Your father never had time for you. Not even from the beginning.”
“It’s not true.”
“Who can deny it?”
“This is harassment. I’ve done nothing wrong. Can’t you see I’m in mourning?” Stone’s breath grew shallow again, barely pulling the smoke-filled air into his lungs.
“Let me tell you a story,” Zohar said. “To put things in context, so you know where you stand.”
“I don’t need to hear a story from you.”
“Oh, really?” Zohar said. “Did you know your grandfather and Meyer Lansky contributed large sums of money to the Revisionist movement, money which was funneled directly to the paramilitary organization the Irgun, money which paid for the bombing of the King David Hotel?”
“So what? That was a million years ago, if it actually happened. Why are you telling me about my grandfather? I only met the man once. Whatever he did or didn’t do in his twisted life has nothing to do with me.”
“Because this relates to your father,” Zohar said. “You know the saying: like father like son.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Stone responded. “My father upheld the law, fought against organized crime. He was a lawyer and a judge. He hated Julius.”
“Just like you hate your father?”
“I’m not talking about him,” Stone said, his stomach awhirl.
“Your father was also a proud Zionist, a member of the Betar youth group, co-founder and chairman of the Eretz Fund. He served as an advisor to the Israeli Supreme Court, helping to extradite and prosecute suspected Nazi war criminals, most notably John Demjanjuk, thought to be the infamous Ivan the Terrible at the Treblinka death camp. Demjanjuk was extradited to Israel in 1986 and sentenced to death. The sentence was later overturned as the Israeli Supreme Court rescinded its earlier judgment and returned Demjanjuk to the United States, citing misconduct on the part of overzealous prosecutors.”
“I see where this is going,” Stone said, overcome with rage at this callous intrusion into his most private grief. “And I’ve heard more than enough. Can’t you at least show some humanity and let me mourn in peace?”
Stone pushed back his chair from the table and stood up. Run, run, he thought. But his legs had gone numb and he waded into the swelling crowd of hipsters. Stone brushed past the skinny girl who had been singing to him, and she said, “Don’t look so sad, darling. Life is crazy for everyone.”
Zohar followed him, hot breath at his ear. “During the infamous Court Street Riot trial, your father’s impartiality was impugned again when he allowed a member of the jury who was sympathetic to the killer Isaac Brilliant to stay on after the Judge became aware of the juror’s own anti-Arab sympathies. There is no doubt Brilliant killed the sixty-three-year-old Palestinian-born shopkeeper Nasser Al-Bassam. There is even video of him bashing the man’s head in with a brick. Yet Brilliant went free.”
He was going to lose his mind, Stone thought, wrenching his arm from Zohar’s grip and making for the exit.
“Your father was always trying to destroy those he considered his enemies. He was a punitive, spiteful man with a biblical hunger for revenge. Let me tell you, he was no better than Julius Stone.”
“That’s enough,” Stone said, bursting out the door and into the street, his voice wracked with broken sobs. He was prepared never to speak a word aloud again.
“Tell me one thing,” Zohar persisted. “That warehouse across the street. Are you familiar with the Crown of Solomon Talmudical Academy? Weren’t you on your way there tonight? Don’t lie to me, Matthew.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“It may be a legitimate Torah school, but I know the organization your father ran funds one hundred percent of its operation.”
“I can’t help you,” Stone said, his mind blank with panic.
“Matthew, I have reason to believe the school is a front for a terrorist cell connected to your father’s former colleague Rabbi Zalman Seligman. People’s lives may be at stake,” Zohar said, grabbing Stone by the shirt, his sour breath turning Stone’s stomach. “I need to know what is going on inside there.”
“This interrogation is over.” Stone tore himself from Zohar’s grip and sprinted up the street at a dead run.
Stone crossed under the BQE without checking for traffic, Zohar’s footsteps fast at his heels, pursuing him. This was his executioner, Stone thought. He would be the end of Stone, but Stone would never speak a word. He stumbled on a curb, righted himself, and continued to run, never looking back. All his organs and muscles and bones worked in tandem now, his nerves vibrating with the pure, uncut rush of adrenaline. The invincible fear was back with greater force than it had been in years. But, Stone thought, if he could just outrun Zohar, just shake him now, he would never again be haunted by anything.
The keys to his father’s red 1980 Thunderbird jangled in his pocket, and he knew what he had to do as he crossed silent Myrtle Avenue with its fried-chicken joints, check-cashing windows, and grim bodegas. He needed to drive, to drive, to drive, to get away, to put everything behind him, to drive and drive and drive and leave his past and everything he ever knew behind. This was not death, this was life, and he was rushing toward it in a breathless sprint. With a furious leap, he reached his father’s car, found the lock, tore the door open, and slid inside. Stone started the ignition and floored the gas, cutting across the sidewalk, nearly knocking over a battered mailbox. Yes, he thought, yes, breathing in his father’s smell on the soft upholstery, so magnetic, so powerful, so redolent with life he was overcome. As he turned right onto Washington Street, green ailanthus and sycamore trees flickering past, he saw in the rearview mirror the face of his father, his unforgiving eyes flashing through his half-moon glasses. He knew he was speeding. His father had never had a ticket in his entire life, and he was showing his displeasure now, but Stone could outrun anyone, didn’t his father know that?
On his right, he passed the abandoned Graham Home for Old Ladies, its windows shuttered like coins on the eyes of the dead, and the skeletal jungle gym in the empty playground. Stone pressed his foot on the gas, passed under the giant cruciform shadow bleeding from the roof of Christ: Light of the World Church, and raced through a red light at Lafayette.
His father was stuck in the mirror, and Stone needed to get him to stop hiding in the glass, certain he was going to step out and devour him whole. “Forgive me, forgive me,” Stone shouted.
The
