The Israel Bond Omnibus (48 page)

So that’s it, Bond thought. This is my swan song. The folds in his heart gave way at the seams and the whole mess collapsed into his stomach. Popping ten Rolaids into his mouth to neutralize it, he recounted in an unemotional manner the whole story.

M. and Beame registered shock at his mention of Dr. Holzknicht.

The former pressed the pilot light button on the stove and in five seconds Ziggy Gershenfeld waddled into the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron. “I heard Oy Oy Seven’s report on these—” His forefingers touched his hearing aids. “I was wondering when you’d call me in.” He was a round little man with bright eyes in a face that was a dead ringer for Harry Golden’s. “If Holzknicht authored this thing it’s something dark and deep. Certainly gives me food for thought.”

“How odd, Z.,” said M. with a nervous smile. “That very phrase ‘food for thought’ went through my mind when I first heard about it.”

“Invert it! Invert it!’ Bond was screaming.

“What the hell do you mean?” thundered Beame.

“Think about food! Think about food! Can’t you see it?” Then Bond spoke slowly, as though recalling something from a dream. “Liana said it. ‘We Jews still live in the kitchen.’ She said it.”

“Liana who? And what’s it got to do with this whole....” Beame started.

Z., Ziggy Gershenfeld, spread his arms. “Everything. She must be a smart cookie, your Liana. Now what ingredients have we got? TUSH... a sharp, perceptive psychiatrist like Holzknicht... and he’s great, I got to say it about the
Deutsche momser
... the destruction of food and drink outlets... ‘Operation Alienation’... your friend’s knowledgeable observation about Jews and kitchens... there’s a pattern in the whole thing.”

Bond cut in. “Let’s add some more elements. The preponderance of these disasters occurring in America’s cities with big Jewish populations... others in South American and Western European cities also with big Jewish populations....”

Z. twisted his apron in his hands. “I got to make some calls, lots of calls. I got a theory. I say we all meet here in three days.”

Beame stuck out a belligerent jaw. “Can we wait three days, Z?”

“It’s got to take at least that long to get hold of all the people I need to talk to.”

M. nodded. “You shouldn’t waste a moment then, Z. Oy Oy Seven, you’ll keep an eye on LeFagel. Op Chief Beame, you’ll give Z. any help he needs. For me there’s a whole new factory to design. Someone give me a slide rule, pencil and some brown butcher paper. I’ll start to
potchke
with it a little.”

Bond had Neon spirit LeFagel away via
sherut
[41]
to a Negev kibbutz, K’far K’farfel, where an old friend, Dr. Saul Rossien, was experimenting with the old chimpanzee-typewriters theory in comparative obscurity and safety. Some scientist had once claimed that if you set a thousand chimps before the same number of typewriters one of them might by accident duplicate some classic by Milton, Homer, Shakespeare, etc. So far the best thing Dr. Rossien had noticed was the work of one chimp who had laboriously pecked out: “One thousand chimps at one thousand typewriters.”

For the next three days Bond moseyed around the license bureau, a shabby little office in the cellar of the Menasha Skulnik Building on Ben Yehuda Street. The office manager, Sharett Pincus, was one of those officious, small-fry bureaucrats who nursed his own little bailiwick jealously, but at the sight of Bond’s hard face and gold security card he dissolved into a quivering mass of fear and cooperated to the fullest.

Besides Pincus, there were three others in the bureau, all clerks and all Jews who had fled from oppression in North Africa. They even looked a great deal alike—short, swarthy, with black moustaches. Pierre LaToole was from Morocco; Hassim Moonlight-Bey and Shofar Ben Blue refugees from Cairo. Naturally, their records were quite in order.

The sign was the first clue.

“Who authorized your bureau to put this up?” Bond said, his finger indicating a placard over one of the windows: LICENSES TO KILL.

Sharett Pincus stammered, “Mr. Bond, sir. There was a memo from the Ministry of Defense. I never ignore memos.”

“Damn it, man! You should have ignored this one,” Bond said.

Pincus paled. “I’ll follow your policy and ignore all memos in the future, sir. But could you send me a memo on that?”

It was clear to Bond now. One of the three (he’d pretty well discounted Pincus) had forged a memo on MOD stationery, which was easy enough to obtain, dropped it in Pincus’ box and the man had complied. There’s no sense asking which one. They’ll all deny it and two will be telling the truth, he thought.

Bond suddenly became jovial. “Sharett, you people do a lot of good work down here. My superiors would like to sort of express our appreciation. You and your good lads are invited to dinner at Ziggy’s internationally famed restaurant tonight as my guests. It’s all on the house.” He slapped the man’s back. “See you at eight.”

Back in Ziggy’s his face hardened again. “M., it goes like this: They knew from Nochum’s tips who the Double Oys were, but they added an extra touch. They knew damn well that a Double Oy spotting a sign ‘LICENSES TO KILL’ would naturally walk to that window. The four Double Oys made the unfortunate mistake of going for renewal in a bunch. That was as sloppv a security mistake as mine was. So the plant in the bureau tipped off his bomber. When they all left the bureau in the same cab... sitting ducks.”

M. sucked on a piece of rock candy. “How do you propose we smoke out the plant?”

“They’ve got some kind of food warfare mounted against us. Let’s turn it on them. This is what I want.”

At 3:30
p.m
. Ziggy’s was closed to the general public. A sign on the door said “Death in the Family.”

M., despite her imprisonment in the wheelchair, was a dynamo in the kitchen. She knew just what Oy Oy Seven had in mind. “Lazar, put extra onions in the chicken soup, the hot Spanish kind. On the gefilte fish double the chrain;
[42]
no, triple it. Use the red cabbage around the meatballs, not the green. The pickles should be from the bottom of the barrel, the briniest ones you got. And throw some pepper on them; it wouldn’t be such a crime. No margarine in the potato
kugel;
[43]
it’s not strong enough. Mix in a jar of my Activated Old World Chicken Fat from contented capons. Use the cream soda; it’s got more bubbles than the root beer, and serve it warm.”

At 8
p.m
. Sharett Pincus and his three clerks walked into Ziggy’s. They were greeted by Israel Bond in a brilliant silver dinner jacket with half-dollar-sized Tahitian pearls for buttons, an Arrow Gordon Dover Taper Glenn shirt with a Lash LaRue leather whip tie, Jantzen’s black velvet evening swimtrunks, and Esquire Old Frontier bedsocks with the Norman Rockwell painting of Quantrell’s Raiders wiping out a wagon train on the sides. Mr. Bond was charm personified on this gala occasion, a master of amusing badinage (his joke about a “faggot maggot” scoring resoundingly); in short, a hail fellow well met all the way.

And that glorious dinner!

“Mr. Moonlight-Bey, you’ve only eaten nine pieces of kugel! For shame! Little clerks with hollow legs need lots of nourishment. Come on, Mr. LaToole. Surely you can stand another pound of that gefilte fish! Mr. Ben Blue, open wide and nice; Mr. Bond’ll give you another spoonful of relish....”

Ninety minutes later the dinner was over. “Golly,” said Bond, “I guess that was just about the niftiest meal I’ve ever had.” He rubbed his tummy. “What do you lads feel about the dinner? Give me your honest opinion.”

“
Merci
, Monsieur Bond. It was
formidable
.” This from Pierre LaToole.

Shofar Ben Blue shook his head in disbelief. “Amazing. Amazing.”

Bond lit a Raleigh. “Mr. Hassim Moonlight-Bey?”

Mr. Hassim Moonlight-Bey patted his own stomach. His full lips opened, revealing firm, strong teeth. From that mouth came a belch, no ordinary belch, but a mega-belch, one that sounded like the ten-second buzzer at Madison Square Garden combined with the horn on a 1931 Model A Ford.

Israel Bond smiled. Then he hurled his bowl of Mother’s chicken soup into Mr. Moonlight-Bey’s leathery visage with all his strength, squashing the aquiline nose to jelly. He dove like an avenging falcon on a lynx that has raided its nest, pinning the man to the floor and driving his fist against the man’s solar plexus.

He stood up. Beame and Z. came out of the kitchen wheeling M.

“There’s your goddam spy. Your gassy belch, Mr. Moonlight-Bey, so traditionally the Arab mode of expressing satisfaction with a meal, gave you away. Sweat him, Op Chief Beame, sweat him good so he’ll talk. From this point on we’re back in the old ball game!”

“He saw a phenomenon so common to us that we wouldn’t give it a second thought. Have you ever noticed how Jewish we become, even the most disaffected of us, when we sit down to bagels and lox, corned beef, pastrami, kishke, borscht with sour cream, M.’s insuperable chicken soup, Manischewitz Wine, sour pickles, et al? In a twinkling of a boiled potato’s eye that vestige of the emotional side of our heritage pops up. With each bite of the schmaltz herring we become ghetto philosophers; each bar of cream cheese sings the score of
Fiddler on the Roof
; each piece of rye bread—and suddenly we’re fighting for the varnished heel with the union label again—makes us hum ‘bum-bai-biddy-biddy-bum-bai!’; the sweet moments spent with the dear departed, the Mommas, Poppas, Zeydahs and Babas, are relived in a kitchen of long ago, and you now can appreciate the wisdom of Mr. Bond’s lady friend, and, in short, we feel Jewish, and... and this is important...
charitable
to other Jews, to Israel.

“This is why Dr. Ernst Holzknicht destroyed the sources of food, many of the leading establishments where Jews congregate to eat it, and so forth.”

Bond raised his hand. “I’d like to go to the bathroom, but tell me this. How does the bombing of the five Halifax-to-New York freighters fit in with your theory, Z?”

Z. laughed, “Schnook, you answered your own question and you don’t know it. I’ll help you. Where is Halifax?”

“In Nova Scotia.” Israel Bond’s face was flushed with shame. “I see. They were all carrying Nova Scotia lox.”

“
Vu den?
[44]
You see, just thinking about food has me talking Yiddish!”

Beame seemed half-convinced. “Let’s assume everything you’ve said is true. But there’s been no sign of any campaign against the Jews outside of North and South America and Western Europe. Don’t they figure in?”