Ira Levin: Boys from Brazil

He gave him the Farbs’ number.

“Phil says you have a list.”

Liebermann blinked. “How does he know?”

“You told him.”

“I did? When?”

“At the house there. Do you?”

“Yes. I sit and stare at it. It’s a problem, Rabbi.”

“You’re telling me . Just hold on to it. I’ll see you soon. Shalom.”

“Shalom.”

He talked with a few reporters and high-school kids. Crutched himself up and down the corridor, getting the hang of it.

One afternoon a stout brown-haired woman in a red coat, with a briefcase, came up to him and said, “Mr. Liebermann?”

“Yes?”

She smiled at him: dimples, fine white teeth. “May I speak to you for a minute, please? I’m Mrs. Wheelock. Mrs. Hank Wheelock.”

He looked at her. “Yes,” he said. “Certainly.”

They went into his room. She sat in one of the chairs with her briefcase on her lap, and he leaned the crutches against the bed and lowered himself into the other chair.

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

She nodded, looking at her briefcase, rubbing at it with a red-nailed thumb. She looked at him. “The police told me,” she said, “that that man came to trap you , not to kill Hank. He had no interest in Hank, or in us; he was only interested in you.”

Liebermann nodded.

“But while he waited,” she said, “he looked at our picture album. It was on the floor there, where he—” She stirred a shoulder, looked at Liebermann.

“Maybe,” he said, “your husband was looking at it. Before the man came.”

She shook her head; the corners of her mouth turned down. “ He never looked at it,” she said. “ I took those pictures. I’m the one that mounted them in there and composed the inscriptions. It was the man looking.”

Liebermann said, “Maybe he just wanted to pass the time.”

Mrs. Wheelock sat silently, looking about the room, her hands folded on her briefcase. “Our son is adopted,” she said. “ My son. He doesn’t know it. It was in the agreement that we weren’t to tell him. The night before last he asked me if he was. The first time he ever mentioned the subject.” She looked at Liebermann. “Did you say anything to him that day that could have put the idea into his head?”

“Me?” Liebermann shook his head. “No. How could I know about it?”

“I thought there might be a connection,” Mrs. Wheelock said. “The woman who arranged the adoption was German. ‘Aschheim’ is a German name. A man with a German accent called and asked about Bobby. And I know you’re…against Germans.”

“Against Nazis,” Liebermann said. “No, Mrs. Wheelock, I had no idea he was adopted, and I wasn’t talking at all when he came in. I’m not talking so good now; you can hear. Maybe because he lost his father he thinks this way.”

She sighed, and nodded. “Maybe,” she said. She made a smile at him. “I’m sorry I disturbed you. It was worrying me that…it might involve him somehow.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “I’m glad we met. I was going to call you before I left and express my sympathy.”

“Did you see the film?” she asked. “No, I suppose you couldn’t. It’s funny the way things work out, isn’t it? Good coming out of bad? All that misery: Hank dead, you hurt so badly, that man—and the dogs too. We had to put them to sleep, you know. And Bobby gets his break out of it.”

Liebermann said, “His break?”

Mrs. Wheelock nodded. “WGAL bought the film he took that day, and showed some of it—you being carried into the ambulance, the dogs with blood on them, that man and Hank when they were carried out—and CBS, that’s the network, all the different stations over the whole country, they picked it up and showed it on ‘The Morning News with Hughes Rudd’ the next morning. Just you being carried into the ambulance. A break like that can be tremendously important for a boy Bobby’s age. Not just for the contacts, but for his own self-confidence. He wants to be a movie director.”

Liebermann looked at her, and said, “I hope he makes it.”

“I think he stands a good chance,” she said, getting up with a faint proud smile. “He’s very talented.”

The Farbs came down on Friday, February 28th, and packed Liebermann and his crutches and his suitcase and briefcase into their dazzling new Lincoln. Marvin Farb gave him a copy of the hospital bill.

He looked at it, stared at Farb.

“And this is cheap,” Farb said. “In New York it would have been twice this.”

“Gott im Himmel!”

Sandy, the girl from the Y.J.D. office, called with a lunch invitation for Tuesday the 11th, at noon. “It’s a farewell.”

He was leaving on the 13th. For him? “For who?” he asked.

“For the Rabbi. Didn’t you hear?”

“The appeal was turned down?”

“He dropped it. He wants to get it over with.”

“Oh my! I’m sorry to hear that. Yes, of course I’ll be there.”

She gave him the address: Smilkstein’s, a restaurant on Canal Street.

The Times had the story in a single column that he had missed, in by the fold. Rather than contest the new conspiracy charge, Gorin had decided to accept the judge’s decision revoking his probation. He would enter a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania on March 16th. “Mm.” Liebermann shook his head.

On Tuesday the 11th, at a little after noon, he caned himself slowly up the stairs at Smilkstein’s. A step at a time, hauling with his right hand at the banister. Murder.

At the top of the stairs, panting and sweating, he found one big room, a hall, with a greenery wedding canopy on a bandstand, lots of uncovered tables and gilt folding chairs, and in the center, on the dance floor, men at a table reading menus, a crooked-backed waiter writing. Gorin, at the head of the table, saw him, put down his menu and napkin, rose and came hurrying. As cheerful-looking as if he’d fought the decision and won. “Yakov! It’s good to see you!” He shook Liebermann’s hand, gripped his arm. “You look fine! Damn it, I forgot the stairs!”

“It’s all right,” Liebermann said, catching his breath.

“It’s not all right; it was stupid of me. I should have picked someplace else.” They walked toward the table, Gorin leading, Liebermann caning. “My chapter heads,” Gorin said. “And Phil and Paul. When are you leaving, Yakov?”

“The day after tomorrow. I’m sorry you—”

“Forget it, forget it, I’ll be in good company down there—Nixon’s whole brain trust. It’s the ‘in’ place for conspirators. Gentlemen, Yakov. This is Dan, Stig, Arnie…”

There were five or six of them, and Phil Greenspan, Paul Stern.

“You look a hundred percent better than last time I saw you,” Greenspan said, breaking a roll, smiling.

Liebermann, sitting down on the chair across from him, said, “Do you know, I don’t even remember seeing you that day.”

“I can believe it,” Greenspan said. “You were slate-gray.”

“Marvelous doctors down there,” Liebermann said. “I was really surprised.” He pulled his chair in, with a hand from the man on his right; leaned his cane against the table edge, picked up his menu.

Gorin, at his left, said, “The waiter says not the pot roast. Do you like duck? It’s terrific here.”

It was a gloomy farewell. While they ate, Gorin talked about lines of command, and arrangements he and Greenspan were making to maintain contact while he was in prison. Retaliatory actions were proposed; bitter jokes made. Liebermann tried to lighten the mood with a Kissinger story, supposedly true, that Marvin Farb had told him. It didn’t help much.