Legends

“Once, sometimes twice a week, he drove off by himself, sometimes for a few hours, sometimes for several days.”

“Do you have any idea where he went?”

“The one time I asked him he told me it was not the business of a wife to keep track of a husband.”

Stella looked brightly at Martin. “We went with him once, Martin.” She smiled at her half sister. “Don’t you remember, Elena—”

“My name is Ya’ara now,” Stella’s sister reminded her coldly.

Stella was not put off. “It was when I came for the wedding,” she said excitedly. “I had to be at Ben-Gurion Airport at seven in the evening for my flight back to New York. Samat was going somewhere for lunch. He said if we didn’t mind killing time, he had to see someone on the coast and could drop me at the airport on the way back to Kiryat Arba.”

“I remember that,” Ya’ara said. “We made bologna sandwiches and packed them in a paper bag and took a plastic bottle of apple juice.” She sighed again. “That was one of the happiest days of my life,” she added.

Stella said to Martin, “He drove north from Tel Aviv along the expressway and got off at the exit marked ‘Caesarea.’ There was a labyrinth of streets but he never hesitated, he seemed to know his way around very well. He dropped us on the edge of the sand dunes near some A-frame houses. We could see those giant chimneys down the coast that produced electricity.”

Ya’ara’s face lit up for the first time in Martin’s presence; the smile almost made her look handsome. “I wore an enormous straw hat to protect my face from the sun,” she recalled. “We ate in the shade of a eucalyptus tree and then hunted for Roman coins in the sand.”

“And what did Samat do while you were scouring the dunes for Roman coins?” Martin asked.

The girls looked at each other. “He never told us. He picked us up at the A-frames at five-thirty and dropped me off at the airport at six-forty.”

“Uh-huh,” Martin said, his brows knitting as he began to fit the first blurred pieces of the jigsaw puzzle into place.

Martin took a tiny address book (tradecraft ruled: Everyone in it was identified by nickname and phone numbers were masked in a simple cipher) from his pocket and used his AT&T card to call Xing’s Mandarin Restaurant (listed in the address book as “Glutamate”) under the pool parlor on Albany Avenue in Crown Heights. Given the time difference, Tsou would be presiding from the high stool behind the cash register, glowering at the waitress who had replaced Minh if she failed to push the more expensive dishes on the menu. “Peking duck hanging in window for two days,” he’d once informed Minh, his gold teeth glistening with saliva, his face a mask of earnestness (so she had gleefully recounted to Martin), “is aphlodisiac, good for elections.”

“Xing’s Mandalin,” a high pitched voice—so distinct it could have been coming from the next room—announced when the phone on the other end was picked up. “Filled up at lunch, same tonight. No flea table until lunch Sunday.”

“Don’t hang up,” Martin cried into the phone. “Tsou, it’s me, Martin.”

“Yin shi, from where you calling, huh?”

Martin knew that Fred would be keeping track of his whereabouts through Asher and the Israeli Shabak, so he figured he was not giving anything away if he told the truth.

“I’m in Israel.”

“Islael the Jewish kingdom or Islael the Jewish delicatessen on Kingston Avenue?” Tsou didn’t wait for an answer. “You know about Minh, huh?”

“That’s why I’m calling. Tell me what happened, Tsou.”

The story spurted out. “She goes up to check the hives the way you asked. She does not come back. Clients begin to fidget. No food in sight. I go out back and shout up ‘Minh.’ She does not shout back. I climb file escape, find Minh laying on back, not moving, not conscious, clazy bees stinging life out of Minh’s face. Disgusting. Makes me want to vomit. Call police on loft phone, Matin, hope you do not mind, let them into loft when they ling bell, they put on face masks and chase bees with can of Laid found below sink, they take Minh away in ambulance, face bloated big like basketball. She dead before ambulance leach hospital, Matin. Minh’s death makes page two Daily News, big headline say ‘Deadly Bees Kill Clown Heights Woman.’“

“What did the police say, Tsou?”

“Two detectives come for lunch next day, sons of bitches leave without paying check, I wave it in faces but they do not take hint. They ask about you and I tell them what I know, which is nothing. They tell me ASPCA in white clothing came to kill bees. They tell me hive exploded, which is what made bees clazy to attack Minh. Comes as news to me honey can explode.”

Through the window Martin could see the orange streaks of sunset in the sky and the rabbi assembling a group of settlers for the stroll down the road toward Hebron and the Cave of Machpela. “It comes as news to me, too,” he said very softly.

“What you say?” Tsou shouted.

“I said, honey doesn’t normally explode.”