over to the other side, even as their pictures were being taken. A surge of panic rose in Stone as he regarded the naked spine of the book. The cover lay limp on the floor like wings, grounded forever. The glue had dried out and cracked, and he brushed aside the amber bits of residue with his finger when he noticed something had fallen out of the binding and onto the floor. It looked like a small blank business card, but when Stone picked it up he realized it was a little envelope—something was inside. He pinched the envelope open and held it upside down, and a bank card embossed with Chase Manhattan Bank’s symbol clattered to the floor. The account number was printed across the laminate front of the card, above the name Walter Stone and the raised words THE ERETZ FUND. Underneath was the expiration date. The card would not expire for another four years. The card was practically brand-new, showing no damage or wear.
That magnetic force was close enough now to touch him, but when Stone turned around there was nothing, just a sort of abstract whisper guiding him, directing him toward a book about one of the former prime ministers of Israel. The book opened to a page on which a quotation was underlined in his father’s hand: “A man who goes forth to take the life of another man whom he does not know must believe one thing only—that by his act he will change the course of history.” Then, as if by instinct, he sifted through the pile, discarding the heavy biography of Moses Montefiore and Émile Zola’s J’accuse, his hand reaching for a book by his father’s friend Rabbi Avraham Grunhut. Stone flipped from page to page until he found this single sentence circled again and again and again, the ink on the page whirling like the eye of a tornado around the frightening words: “Nothing is more righteous than revenge administered at the right time and place.”
The card burned in Stone’s hand, heavy as a piece of iron. He knew this bank card was the vehicle for that revenge.
Was he crazy? He closed his eyes against the words his father had highlighted in these books. The room closed in on him, the walls pressing in. His father had brought all his intellectual power to bear to ensure Isaac Brilliant would get away with murder. Why would he risk his entire career, his reputation, so a Jewish man would not be found guilty of murdering an Arab man? And Demjanjuk, the accused prison guard from the Treblinka death camp—his father had been instrumental in sentencing him to death, only to have the judgment overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court. And who else had there been over the years? There had to be others, there had to be.
Stone had always assumed his father was a man of law and order, operating in good faith from the bench, acting as a moral and honest broker. But now, tearing off his father’s robe, Stone was beset by doubts. The card had been planted in the book for Stone to find, for him to complete his father’s work. But it was not right. He knew whatever it was he was tasked to do with that card involved terrible violence. Stone’s stomach lurched, but he had nothing inside himself to throw up. He began shouting at the books, railing at them, tossing them about the room. Why did he ever take those books, when he might have left them at his father’s apartment and been free of him forever? He had not slept in three days, had not left his room in six, and his head was a storm of confusion. Was he losing his mind? Was his exhausted brain making connections that did not exist, or had he reached some higher level of understanding? He knew he couldn’t stay in this room forever, and, casting around for an excuse to leave the fetid bedroom and his father’s books behind, Stone remembered he had an appointment the next day (or was it today, or yesterday?) with his father’s lawyer to discuss the Judge’s will. He stretched a trembling hand for the nearest book, something by Horace, and opened it to the middle pages, hoping to find something benign, meaningless. He read: “Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.”
“Who are you to say when wisdom is wisdom and when wisdom is not wisdom? You’ve been dead over two thousand years.” Stone laughed and laughed until his sides ached and he tumbled onto his mattress and into a dead sleep.
He slept for sixteen dreamless hours and awoke the following morning, cleansed of whatever madness had overtaken him the night before, with the bank card still clutched in his grip. He had found a bank card, that was all; nothing about that discovery constituted an obligation or marching orders of any kind. Dozens of books still lay tossed about the room; he gathered up the scattered books and stacked them back on top of the piles. The sun shone in through his windows, and Stone desired to be out in the fresh air. He found the lawyer’s card in his wallet and discovered his appointment was for that day—in two and a half hours. The homeboys from the Whitman Houses laughed on the pavement outside his window. The fact that joyous laughter still bloomed made him feel unaccountably hopeful. Stone decided he would walk the mile or so to Brooklyn Heights. He slipped the card into his pocket, ate some dry cereal while standing over the sink, and drank three glasses of water. He was prepared to handle whatever came his way. His mother had left a long handwritten note for him taped to the back of the front door, but he disregarded it and locked the door behind him.
ZOHAR WAS WAITING in the street for Stone. His suit was rumpled, tie knotted loosely at his neck, face unshaven—he looked as bad as Stone imagined he himself looked after his marathon tangle with the Judge’s books. “Good morning, Matthew,” Zohar said, approaching, a crushed Styrofoam cup in his hand.
Stone wanted to be irritated by Zohar’s intrusion on his privacy at a time like this, but now that he had seen what was in his father’s books, he was also curious to know what Zohar had to say. Who was his father after all, and what did he expect of Stone? His father’s legacy would become his own, in the same manner the Judge had been obliged to carry his own father’s bad name around with him like a yellow star pinned to his chest. Stone knew whatever Zohar was up to concerned his own future and that his prospects depended on the past and how it was framed. This was an opportunity to gain perspective, to understand how the critics and haters saw Walter Stone. He needed to know what Zohar was up to if he was going to fight back and defend his father’s name, his own life. Stone said a curt good morning and turned onto Myrtle Avenue. Zohar, at his heels, burned-coffee breath in his face, said, “Going somewhere, Matthew?”
“You certainly are observant.”
Zohar stepped in front of Stone and blocked his way with his body, arms crossed. “Maybe you can tell me why Zalman Seligman’s man, Moshe Reisen, has called on you three mornings in a row.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about.”
“But you do know Zalman Seligman.”
Stone continued to walk. Let Zohar beg.
“I know you know Zalman Seligman. You’re not going to deny that, are you?”
“If you know the answer, why are you asking me?”
“Do you know who Zalman Seligman really is? He is not some kindly old rabbi living out his golden years in Miami Beach. He is a violent criminal, hiding behind his faith, who has been arrested more than a dozen times in the past twenty years in relation to violent incidents throughout the West Bank.”
Stone couldn’t help but roll his eyes at Zohar’s intensity.
“Maybe this laundry list will put things in perspective for you. Seligman is alleged to have assaulted a Palestinian mother of two while her children watched; he has been arrested for overturning shopkeepers’ carts in the Hebron casbah; he has been cited for firing his pistol in front of a mosque on numerous occasions; he has been fined for trespassing, harassment, arson, vandalism of property. He was arrested for shooting a Palestinian man’s donkey, for which he spent fifteen days in prison. The list goes on and on: harassment, intimidation, violence . . . Rabbi Seligman will stop at nothing to advance the cause of a Greater Israel.”
“That’s quite a resumé,” Stone said, “but it means nothing to me. Sounds like you know Zalman Seligman a lot better than I do.”
“Does
