Cut Throat Dog (2 page)

Sorry, the man in the black suit apologizes, I didn’t notice you were blind.

Not completely, he says with an ingratiating smile, I see patches of light and shade. I can see your silhouette. But I can hardly distinguish between your face and your suit.

And he brings his face close to the jacket of the man’s elegant suit and puts out a hesitant hand:

May I? Touching complements what remains of my vision.

Go ahead, the owner of the black suit presents the fabric of his jacket to the fingers of the visually impaired soldier, who notes an unmistakable fact: the man is looking at him with intent curiosity, as if he too is trying to clarify to himself who this blind man reminds him of, or where he knows him from.

The beginning scriptwriter-barman looks at them through the gleaming glass he is holding as he polishes it to a high shine, and sees a picture that ignites his imagination: two strangers permitting themselves the kind of intimacy that exists only between co-conspirators about to carry out a prearranged plan together. More and more the pair look to him like a dangerous hit team seconds before an act of violence. To be on the safe side he moves a little to the right, so as to be within reach of the black C-Z pistol lying under the counter with a bullet in its barrel.

Fine cashmere, pronounces the blind soldier, rolling the ‘r’ in a heavy Sicilian accent.

You understand something about fabrics, says the owner of the black suit admiringly.

Syracusians are well known for their sharp senses, he embarks on a fishing expedition, but since the guy doesn’t take the bait he tries another direction:

I’ve been looking for a suit like that for years, he announces.

Is that so? The owner of the black suit says in surprise, Did you ever see a suit like this before?

A few years ago I was in some place in Scotland. They had cashmere suits there but there was a problem with the trousers. One of my legs is a little shorter than the other.

Were you born like that?

I was hurt in an accident. They removed a piece of the bone.

Now the barman-scriptwriter is sure the two men are exchanging loaded messages, and he pricks up his ears so as not to miss a word.

That place in Scotland, the man in the black suit presses a point in the code, do you remember where it was exactly?

Yes, it was a big commercial center on the high road, between villages, says the blind man.

Did they make whiskey there too?

Whiskey with a brown color, almost like Macallan, but very soft and friendly.

Auchentoshen? suggests the man in the black suit.

No, says the blind man, even though the place, as far as I remember, isn’t far from Dunbartonshire. It’s on the A-9, about eight or nine miles North of Pitlochry, or St Andrews.…

Bruar?

That’s it! The blind man leaps on the fateful code word: Bruar! Is the suit from there?

Yes and no, says the owner of the suit: there’s a store here that imports these suits from over there.

Here in Manhattan? The blind man exclaims, barely able to conceal his excitement.

When you go out of the pub, the cashmere man directs him, turn right, walk to the corner, turn right again, and go into the third store from the corner. Go to the men’s department and ask for Winnie. She’ll take care of you.

Thank you, says the blind man, thank you very much. He finishes off the rest of the Bushmills, puts the glass down carefully on the counter, and holds out his hand to the owner of the cashmere suit. When the latter shakes his hand, he notes that he has a rapid pulse rate, an unhealthy heart and a defective blood supply. The man is quick-tempered
and impatient, but on the whole a short-distance runner, he sums up to himself and starts to limp out of the pub, but at the last moment he changes his mind. He stops and asks the barman for directions to the toilet. The barman offers to lead him there, but he declines the offer politely and firmly:

No, thanks, I have to get along alone in the world. Just give me exact directions.

The barman gives him instructions including directions, distances, and the number of steps to be descended, and the bleeding soldier sets out with measured steps and disappears down the stairs.

What a guy, says the barman admiringly, trying to get a lead into the labyrinth of this close and mysterious relationship. He wonders what war the man was wounded in.

But the man in the cashmere suit refuses to volunteer any information. On the other hand, as soon as they hear the toilet door slam shut, he makes haste to get hold of the person called ‘Winnie’ on his cell phone and inform her of the imminent arrival of a purblind Italian customer with a limp, worth investing in. Give him a good time, like you know how, and get what you can out of him.

Then he leaves a crumpled ten dollar bill on the bar and hurries out without waiting for change or saying goodbye.

At the same time, in the toilet, the blind-Italian impersonator takes out his cell phone and punches a number. He’s on hold, merde, he curses in French. He hangs up and decides to wait half a minute and try again. But suddenly the cell phone vibrates in his hand. He looks at the display. Yadanuga is getting back to him. He touches the green button and takes the call.

Hello, Shakespeare, says Yadanuga’s warm baritone from the other side of the world, you called me?

Tell me, Yadanuga, he whispers, can you imagine Adonas’s mug without a beard?

Whose mug? Yadanuga can’t make out what his friend is saying.

Tino the Syrian, nu, the one we called Tino Rossi because of his egg-yolk tenor, says Shakespeare.

Are you talking about Adonas the maniac who murdered Jonas? asks Yadanuga.

Yes, says Shakespeare, I think I’ve tracked him down here in Manhattan.

For God’s sake! Shakespeare! protests Yadanuga. What are you getting into?!

I’m sure it’s him, says Shakespeare. The trouble is he’s shaved off his beard. But judging by the walk and the voice it’s him. Shut your eyes, turn on your visual imagination, and describe his face to me without the beard. How do you see his cheekbones and chin?

Close that case, Shakespeare! You finished Adonas off with your own legs four hundred years ago!

I didn’t finish him off, Shakespeare insists. I lost sight of him in the dark. I’m telling you this character has a lyrical tenor that’s unmistakable.

Intelligence reports said explicitly that his body was found in the Libyan desert, exactly where you lost sight of him, Yadanuga tries to remind him.

Forget our intelligence, Shakespeare snaps in an angry voice. We’ve already seen what they know.

In this case the information is accurate, protests Yadanuga. The Belgian pathologist confirmed that the guy died of dehydration and a torn liver.

I saw the Belgian pathologist’s report too, says Shakespeare, but how do you know that the body he examined was Adonas’s?

Get it into your head, Yadanuga pleads, Adonas is dead!

Not for me, says Shakespeare in a voice that reaches the pricked-up ears of the barman, who is amazed to hear Hebrew coming from behind the toilet door.

You killed him before the flood, says Yadanuga. Leave that ghost alone, Shakespeare!

Thanks, Yadanuga, says Shakespeare, you’ve never been so unhelpful as in this case. I’ll leave him alone when I’ve turned him into a ghost.

The barman takes a little notebook labeled ‘Ideas for scripts’ out of his pocket, and while the blind man lingers in the toilet he writes: ‘The cashmere man, the blind man, Winnie’ and adds in brackets: ‘The cashmere man called Adonas—a neo-Nazi anti-Semite. The blind man—an Israeli impersonating an Italian. Apparently a Mossad agent. Winnie—apparently works as a sales assistant in a men’s fashion store round the corner. Investigate.’

When Shakespeare comes out of the toilet he is not surprised to find that the man in the black suit is gone. His hasty disappearance from the scene reinforces his suspicion that this is the man he has been searching for for eighteen years.

The man who was here, is he a regular customer? He asks the barman in Italian English.

I don’t know, replies the barman in Hebrew. I’ve only been here a week. This is the first time I’ve seen him.

How did he know where you’re from? Shakespeare asks in Hebrew.

From the accent I suppose, says the barman.

Now it is clear to Shakespeare that he has to meet Winnie, but he decides to make it hard for her to identify him.

If you see that man, he says to the barman, who interrupts him:

I have the feeling that the anti-Semitic dog won’t show his face here again.

What makes you think so?

He got out of here like a crook running from the scene of the crime, pronounces the barman.

If you run into him anywhere by chance, here’s the number of my cell phone. If you get voice mail, leave a message that Adonis is alive, and he was seen at such and such a place.

Adonis or Adonas? inquires the scriptwriter.

To you—Adonis, says Shakespeare.

No problem, says the excited scriptwriter and holds out his hand and introduces himself: Turel Shlush.

From the famous Shlush family?

A branch of the family, says Turel modestly. I’ll help you get your hands on this Adonis.

That’s music to my ears, Shakespeare shakes Turel Shlush’s cold hand. If you leave a message, say it’s from Tyrell.

And what should I call you? asks Tyrell of the icy hands.

Invent a name, Shakespeare challenges him.

Not Fellini, says Tyrell, not Zeffirelli, not Antonioni—you know what? I can’t find a name to fit you.

Why not?

Because you give off something terribly confusing, confesses Tyrell with a kind of naive embarrassment that touches Shakespeare’s heart.

I’ll tell you my real name, says Shakespeare, but don’t pass it on.

It won’t cross my lips, Tyrell swears without saying ‘I swear’. I was in an undercover unit in the army. I know what a double identity is.

Call me Hanina, says Shakespeare.

Hanina! repeats the astonished Tyrell. The last name in the world I would have given you.

Why? Hanina pretends innocence.

Because you’re not a Hanina! You’re a Maoz, a Giora, a Tavor, says Tyrell, never a Hanina! I can’t call you Hanina!

Then call me ‘S.N.F.’

Which stands for what?

Secret nameless friend, says Shakespeare and leaves the pub.

The barman is happy to be left alone in the deserted pub, in this damp, solitary hour of a winter afternoon. He hurries to take out his notebook. He turns to a new page, writes the heading ‘Secret Nameless Friend’, and begins to write feverishly.

Nobody loved Hanina. Hanina was once in love with a woman, but even when he loved he wasn’t beloved. There was nothing about him that people love to love. Hanina himself, a sturdily built man, didn’t love any of the two hundred and forty eight body parts he had received from nature, and he refused to accept his body until he had laboriously reshaped every single part of it. Be it his jaws or his chin, his fingers or his toes. Already as a youngster his legs seemed to him too short and thick. Exhausting exercise, cruel self-discipline, endurance developed to the limits of the ability of the nervous system to bear pain—and even beyond, to the point where the pain is so intense that it numbs pain—finally resulted in the ability of his short legs to carry him distances that Olympic long-distance runners could only dream of, and his terrifying kicks sent more than a few believers, who had joyfully joined the holy war in the knowledge that the pleasures of this world are very small compared to those of the next as promised in the Repentance Sura of the Koran, to Paradise.

The shortness of his legs had stopped bothering him long ago, and their remarkable power, of which we will hear more later, had turned into a source of private amusement and practical jokes, such as the limp he just adopted,
and which he now abandoned as he entered the elegant store. He made for the men’s department and proceeded to the suits section with a springy, almost dancing, step, his darting eyes boldly appraising the shapely sales assistants and challenging them: let’s see you recognizing me now, Winnie. If you’ve got any sense, we’ll have a secret that Mister Adonis, who sent me to you, doesn’t know. Who are you, Winnie? Are you the slender black sales assistant with the ample breasts and the shaved head? Or are you the other one, the one with the childish face and the boyish haircut, wasp-waisted and stringy limbed, like the long-legged Segestria Perfida spider?

While his eyes are darting from one to the other the black sales assistant approaches him and asks how she can help him.

I’m looking for a black cashmere suit, he says in a French accent.

She asks for his size and as he answers her the long-legged spidery wasp intervenes and points out to her colleague that this dangerous man belongs to the impudent race of the short-legged. She conveys this strange diagnosis in a whisper, but she makes sure that it will reach his ears. The provocation is like a surprising opening move in a game of chess.

Wait until you see how thick they are, he winks at the treacherous spider with his non-aiming left eye, while his aiming eye, which has seen the whites of the eyes of quite a few men in the last second of their lives, penetrates her with the sharpness of a laser beam.

I can’t wait to see! The long-legged spider laughs suggestively and adds a question:

Hey, who are you spending the holiday with?

With a secret nameless friend, says Shakespeare.

Wow, the spider exclaims enthusiastically, a secret nameless friend! I’m dying to meet him!

He’s standing in front of you on two short legs, which are just long enough to reach from his ass to the floor.

I’m spending the holiday alone with a secret nameless friend too, says the Segestria spider.

The question is whether we’ll be alone together or apart, says Shakespeare.

Being alone on Christmas is like being a parrot in a cage in a deserted pub, whistling ‘Strangers in the Night’ to itself, says the spider with the stringy limbs.

They exchange cell phone numbers, and after abandoning the idea of the suit, he sets out for his meeting with the director of public relations in the pharmaceutical firm.