Legends

Martin had paid off the taxi in front of the Golders Green underground station. Standing under the word “Courage” engraved in the stone monument at the top of Golders Green, he took his bearings, then set off down the broad avenue awash in sunlight and filled with midday pedestrians—Filipino maids pushing old ladies tucked into wheel chairs, teenage boys in embroidered skull caps careening past on mountain bikes, dozens of ultrareligious women wearing wigs and long dresses window shopping in front of stores with signs in English and Hebrew. Martin found a second-hand store run by a Jewish charity and bought himself an old valise that looked as if it had been around the world several times. He made a slit in the frayed silk lining under the lid and hid his stash of documents, then filled the valise with threadbare but serviceable clothing. He came across a second-hand Aquascutum that they were practically giving away because the belt was missing and the hem was in tatters. At a chemists, he bought more toothpaste, a disposable razor and a small tube of shaving cream. On Woodstock Avenue off Golders Green he spotted a ramshackle house next to a synagogue with a sign on the unkempt lawn advertising rooms for rent. He paid the grumpy landlady for a week in advance, stored his gear and went around the corner for a bite to eat at a kosher delicatessen across the street from a church. Midafternoon he walked up Golders Green to the Chinese Medicinal Center for a session of acupuncture on his game leg. When he complained that his leg felt sorer after the acupuncture, the old Chinese man, plucking the long needles deftly out of Martin’s skin, said it was well known that things had to get worse before they could get better. Leaving a ten pound note on the counter, Martin promised he would bear that in mind. Starting back toward the rooming house, he noticed he was able to walk with less pain than before; he wondered whether it was due to the acupuncture needles or the power of suggestion. He bought a phone card at a tobacco shop and ducked into a fire-engine red booth on the corner of Woodstock and Golders Green that had a burnt phone book dangling from a chain. He rummaged in his wallet for the scrap of paper with the phone number that Elena had found on the back of the strudel recipe and, inserting his plastic card, dialed it.

Martin retrieved Dante Pippen’s rusty Irish accent for the occasion. “And who would I be speaking to, then?” he inquired when a female voice came on the line.

“Mrs. Rainfield, dear.”

“Good morning to you, Mrs. Rainfield. This is Patrick O’Faolain from the phone company. I’m up on a pole on Golders Green trying to sort out your lines. Could you do me the favor of pressing the number five and the number seven on your phone, in that order.”

“Five, then seven?”

“That’s the ticket, Mrs. Rainfield.”

“Did you hear it?”

“Loud and clear. Do it once more to be sure, will you, now?”

“Okay?”

“Beautiful. We ought to be hiring the likes of you.”

“Will you tell me what’s going on?”

“Don’t ask me how but your cable seems to have gotten itself twined around your neighbors’ lines. One of them complained she heard cross talk when she tried to use her phone. Did you experience any static on yours, Mrs. Rainfield?”

“Now that you mention it, the phone did seem fuzzier than usual this morning.”

“You ought to be hearing me clear as a bell now.”

“I am, thank you.”

“We spend most of our time climbing up phone poles to fix things that aren’t broken. Now and then it’s gratifying to fix something that is. You get half the credit—it was child’s play once you hit the five and the seven. For my work sheet I’ll be needing your full name and an address to go with your phone.”

“I’m Doris Rainfield,” the woman said, and she gave an address on North End Road, a continuation of Golders Green, behind the railroad station.

“Thanks a mill.”

“Ta.”

Martin pressed the buzzer next to the enormous steel door with “Soft Shoulder” engraved on a brass plaque and looked up into the security camera. There was a burst of static over the intercom. A woman’s nasal voice surfed above the static.

“If you’re delivering, you need to go round to the loading dock in back.”

“Mr. Martin Odum,” Martin called, “come to see the director of Soft Shoulder.”

“Are you the bloke what’s shipping the prostheses to Bosnia?”

“Afraid not. I was sent by a friend of the director’s, a Mr. Samat Ugor-Zhilov.”

“Wait a min, love.”

The static gave way to an eerie quiet. A moment later the woman whom Martin took for Mrs. Rainfield came back on the intercom. “Mr. Rabbani, he wants to know how you know Mr. Ugor-Zhilov.”

“Tell him,” Martin said, employing the phrase Kastner had used the day they met on President Street, “we’re birds of a feather.”

“Come again?”

“Yes, well, you can tell Mr. Rabbani that I know Samat from Israel.”