Adam Levin - The Instructions

Because I’m calling for Roth.

“That doesn’t prove anything. Anyone—” he said. “Please hold on, sir,” he said.

And as I held I understood. It didn’t prove anything because they must have already played Ori’s tape on TV and any prankster would know the demand that I’d made. Whether I’d seen it but was too stupid to figure that out, or I hadn’t yet thought to turn on the television, or I was a prankster, the guy on the other end of the line wasn’t sure.

Another click. “Sir?” said the man.

Get me Roth.

“How do we know that you are who you say?”

Forty-some minutes ago, we phoned in a bunch of fake emergencies to distract you guys, I said. The first one was about an incident at the Frontier Motel. Would I know that if I wasn’t Gurion? I said.

The guy hesitated. They must have said something about that on television, too.

“We need to further authenticate.”

How about this: For the Frontier Motel one, I used the same phone as I’m using now, but not for the fire in the Nakamooks’ basement, and not for the gunmen at the mall. You can check your logs against your caller ID.

“Hold on, sir,” he said.

A click.

Now they’d know I wasn’t stupid and they’d know I was Gurion; they’d assume, now, that none of us were watching TV. I saw that was good, especially the last part: now, if they decided to raid us, they might not spend manpower preventing live cameras from shooting the raid. We’d be that much more likely to see them coming.

Another click, and then a different man’s voice, a Texan-sounding one.

“Wayne Persphere, crisis negotiator,” he said. “I’m speaking to Gurion?”

You’re not Roth.

“You said thirty minutes. It’s hardly been twenty.”

My call-waiting beeped — Eliyahu.

Hold on, Wayne Persphere.

I clicked over. Eliyahu? I said.

“The Levinson went to the bathroom,” he said. “He heard someone breathing in one of the stalls, and came back into the gym and told me. Long made short, BryGuy Maholtz now lays at my feet, here in the bathroom, head and shoulders sopping wet from the multiple swirlies the Five, after binding his arms and legs, administered.”

Did he call anybody?

“He said he called the police, but they were already here, and he wasn’t able to tell them anything that they wanted to know. He said they asked about numbers, but he didn’t know the numbers — he’d been hiding in here since before we cleared the gym. He says so, at least.”

You believe him? I said.

“I do,” said Eliyahu. “He’s too scared to lie. He’s crying his face off, begging we don’t kill him. Should we keep him here, or—”

No, I said. I know something we can do with him. We’re on our way to the Cage — tell the Five to bring him. Right now I have to go, though. I’m talking to the cops.

I took a deep breath, and clicked back over.

Roth? I said.

“Wayne Persphere,” said Persphere.

Wayne Persphere, I said. Wayne Persphere, I said. Wayne Persphere, I said, you are not Philip Roth. I want to talk to Roth. Put Roth on the phone.

“You said thirty min—”

How long does it take to get a man on the phone?

“I think you can imagine. He’s not just some man. He’s a great American novelist. Some say the greatest. You yourself called him ‘the last great—’”

Don’t ever put quotes around my words again, Persphere.

“I’m not trying to upset you. Kindly hear me out. I’m just trying to tell you that it’s no easy thing. We rustled up his number from the telephone company, but it turns out he writes in a barn this time of day. A barn in Connecticut. It’s a big ole barn, that, with a bathroom and wiring, but a barn nonetheless. The barn’s behind his house and he doesn’t have a phone there, for reasons, I reckon, of concentration. After we tried him and got no answer, we rung up his publisher and got to his editor, who told us what was and then told us what wasn’t.”

And?

“And now we’re sending some good local lawfolks who live there to talk to him. It might take us a little more than seven minutes, though.”

Six.

“Right,” he said, “six. We’d like some more time.”

How much?

“We’d like ninety minutes — he’s really out in the sticks.”

You’ve got one hour.

“Much appreciated. Can we talk about something else now?”

The prisoners?

“Yes,” he said. “Well — prisoners. Wait. Are they hostages or prisoners?”

Get Roth on the line and they’ll stay safe, Wayne.

“Can we call you back on this line to talk?”

You can call me back as soon as you’ve got Roth. No concessions before then. And you can tell your boss I don’t much take a shine to fake Texans and their like. In your accents I hear deeply harbored contempt.

“Contempt for whom?”

For real Texans, Wayne.

“I rightly must say—”

Rightly come real or pick another accent. And use a better name. No one’s ever been a Persphere.

“We’ll—”

I punched END.

RICK STEVENS, NBC NEWSANCHOR: Sorry to interrupt you, Bob, but we have an important update: we’ve just received confirmation that Gurion Maccabee had indeed attended two of those schools we reported on earlier. I repeat, he had attended two of them. Now on the line with us from Chicago, we have Rabbi Lionel Unger, headmaster of the Solomon Schechter School, where the young terrorist was in attendance from 2001 til just this past May.

Rabbi Unger, a great number of your male students failed to show up to school today, and I take it this isn’t any kind of ditch-day prank.

UNGER: No sir, it isn’t. Jewish students do not engage in ditch-days, at least they didn’t used to, though frankly, we can’t yet say for sure why they failed to show up — no one knows. I, for one, suspect that they were told by Gurion of his plans to commit this act of terrorism and they all went somewhere to watch it on television.

STEVENS: Where might they have gone?

UNGER: Maybe to the home of a student with two working parents, maybe to a pizza parlor, it’s hard to say.

STEVENS: A pizza parlor.

UNGER: That is correct, sir. They aren’t aliens, these boys, but Americans. Like so many young American boys, ours enjoy pizza, and frisbee as well, even black dance music. They play yo-yo and ping-pong and wear denim jeans on casual occasions when slacks aren’t called for. Ice cream is something they find delicious. If you prick them, they bleed, sir. Like any American.

STEVENS: I wasn’t trying to— Just how many students, in total, are missing, Rabbi Unger?

UNGER: Two-hundred twelve, though three are legitimately ill with strept throat.

STEVENS: Two-hundred twelve from your school alone.

UNGER: Yes, from Schechter Chicago. That’s all our boys, grades five through eight, and a smattering of our lower-schoolers.

STEVENS: That’s a lot of young boys to congregate in a pizza parlor, let alone a living room.

UNGER: I see your point, and will consider its merits.

STEVENS: In the meantime, can you tell us what kind of student Gurion was?

UNGER: I can’t speak of his record. That’s private information, protected by the law. I can tell you, however, that I always suspected he was dangerous, violent, too big for his britches, and swollen-headed. He confirmed this for me last May in my office, when in the middle of a quiet conversation we were having, he physically assaulted me on the face with a stapler.

STEVENS: A stapler.

UNGER: My own stapler. He threw it at my face.

STEVENS: May I ask what the conversation was about?