The Ministry of Special Cases (28 page)

Frida gave a sharp, awkward cry. Gustavo went into his office to get the severance check he’d already written—generous, he thought, as generous as could be. Lillian stood there, not even stunned. She felt relieved. One less thing to think about.

Lillian needed all her time for Pato, to see to his return and, when he got back, to be by his side. If she missed an opportunity because of this job, what good was money anyway. And when her son was with her she could live off the joy. From looking at Pato alone, Lillian knew she wouldn’t starve. She’d eat the boy up for a lifetime. Gustavo came back and handed Lillian an envelope. All she could think in the moment, all Lillian could manage, was to note that first thing in the morning she must rush to the Ministry of Justice and remove her work number from the forms.

KADDISH BREATHED THE FUSTY BREATH
of the two officers flanking his chair. He made no attempt to stand. Still, they each kept a hand on a shoulder, pushing him down. There was no excuse for such treatment. He wasn’t a criminal (or, at least, if he did break certain laws, he wasn’t in the police station because of them now). If he had to take some responsibility for his current predicament, he’d concede only to souring the overall tone.

Kaddish had maybe driven a bit fast en route to the station, upon arriving he might have expressed his concerns a touch too loudly, and, when the policeman out front had been unwilling to facilitate his request, Kaddish might just have seen himself into the
subcomisario’s
office, already familiar with the way.

It was Lillian’s optimism he was bearing. She’d been energized by the Ministry of Justice and convinced that with the baker testifying to having seen the police, the police might admit to having been seen. If Kaddish didn’t feel as upbeat, he was still ready to try. He’d offered to go back on his own to the station that had first held Pato.

“You do not barge into my station and make a scene,” the officer behind the desk said. “You do not demand anything, especially an audience with me. I remember you,” he said. “I know who you are.”

“That’s more than most,” Kaddish said. The policeman on Kaddish’s left gave him a shove.

“What,” the officer said, “could possibly have brought you back here?”

Kaddish, who didn’t care about a shove and didn’t care to be bullied, who feared more deeply and differently for his son’s death than ever before, did not feel like being polite. “Why the fuck else would anyone show up at a police station except to get help? That’s your fucking job.”

“Sometimes they come to turn themselves in,” the officer said. “We’ve had a huge run of guilty conscience. Is that why you’re here? To confess to something?”

“I came by to see if you wanted to do the same,” Kaddish said. “If there’s something you’d like to tell me, now is your chance.”

The officer looked bored. He took off his glasses and placed them on his desk next to Kaddish’s papers. “It’s probably unwise to keep talking this way. If you want to commit suicide, it would be simpler if you went home and shot yourself in the head.”

“And if I die in this chair won’t I end up at home and listed a suicide just the same?”

“You wouldn’t necessarily end up anywhere.”

Kaddish leaned as far forward as those restraining him permitted. “I know what you do,” Kaddish said. “I know how you do it.”

The officer picked up Kaddish’s ID. “Mr. Poznan,” he said, reading from it, “what could you possibly know?”

“Really, I only came for assistance in locating my son,” Kaddish said. “I have a witness now. Somebody saw you. If you’re ready to admit your part, then it’s best I don’t say anything, as you’ve advised.”

“Too late,” the officer said. “You missed your chance to kiss and make up.”

“You arrested my son,” Kaddish said. “You released my son—you released him to me, in this station. And then you came over to my house and took him right back.”

“We took him back?”

“Forget that part,” Kaddish said. “If the lady officer will come give
testimony, or if you’ll give me the page from the logbook, we are in the process—we are very close to getting a habeas corpus. It would be useful if you would tell the truth.”

“You say your son was released into your custody.”

“I do.”

“So what kind of habeas corpus do you want? Do you want one that says your son is with you? You could issue that yourself. I’ll have one of the men take dictation if you’d like.”

“You took him back. That’s how it works. You release them so you can snatch them right up again. It’s one of your tricks.”

“My tricks?” the officer said. “Since we didn’t rearrest your son, and since we didn’t have him in the first place—”

“You did,” Kaddish said. “That’s the frustrating part. You can’t deny what I know, what is fact.”

“I deny it.”

“I know how it works, even. I know about the phone books, I know what you do.”

“What is it we do?”

“You use phone books and class lists and anything that links two people. You take them for nothing and that’s why you don’t charge them with a crime, that’s why it’s secret. This government has started a crazy war of association. You’ve made up a national threat. I didn’t believe it myself,” Kaddish said, “but now I do. You take one, and then you take the others without reason.”

“Using phone books?”

“Yes,” Kaddish said.

“Theory aside,” the officer said, “there’s a hole in your reasoning. If you’re under the impression that I have your son here, aren’t you afraid of what such a visit will cost him?”

Kaddish considered before answering. “I’m not afraid. And I’d rather not consider why that is. I’d rather not worry about why I don’t worry.”

“There is one part of your claim that touches on reality, and even that you got reversed.” The officer stood up. He unbuttoned his uniform jacket, removed it, and hung it carefully on the back of his chair. He lifted a thick, worn Buenos Aires telephone book off a file cabinet and
held it with both hands. The officer stood before Kaddish and the policemen at Kaddish’s sides put more weight onto his shoulders. Each pulled back on one of his arms. “It’s not what’s inside the phone book that’s most useful”—and here, with two hands, he raised it high—“it’s the information that the phone book draws out.” Like that, he swung it down onto Kaddish’s head.

In that first instance Kaddish wondered if his neck had broken and was only happy to register the pain from the policemen pulling at his arms. If it’s possible to be surprised in such a manner twice, Kaddish couldn’t believe how much it hurt the second time the phone book was brought down on his head. The blow was delivered with such force, Kaddish thought his eardrums had burst outward from the pressure generated within. Kaddish meant also to say something, to request that the officer stop. Opening his mouth, he found it shut with another blow, his teeth driven deep into his tongue.

Right then the officer stopped on his own.

Kaddish used the break to great effect. He freed his teeth, retracted his swelling tongue, and set himself up for the next series of blows, which came quickly.

“Do … not… bother… me … again,” the officer said. He brought down the phone book once with each word, punctuating. Kaddish saw endless points of light and heard a great roar each time he was struck.

After the next round, the officer said, “All right, then.” He followed it up with such a wallop, Kaddish heard a crack. He took a deep swallow of blood.

“You want to know our secrets, Mr. Poznan. This is one: I can beat you to death with a phone book and it won’t leave a mark. I can see you’ve bit your tongue,” he said, studying Kaddish’s face. “Otherwise what you feel inside doesn’t show. Do you get it? Now do you see why the phone book is our greatest investigative resource?” The officer patted the book and gave Kaddish a moment to agree.

“Do you have my son?” Kaddish said.

The officer let loose with a pounding so relentless, Kaddish was sure it would not stop until his head, like a nail, was driven into his chest.

The officer stopped and waited to see if Kaddish had anything smart
to say. When Kaddish didn’t, the officer gave him the handkerchief from his own pocket. “Wipe your mouth,” he said. “There’s blood.” The policemen at Kaddish’s sides released him. Kaddish could still see and could still hear, but he was so disoriented he wasn’t sure how to process what it was that he saw and heard. It took him some seconds to connect his brain to the burning in his arm and to move the handkerchief to his lips.

“That was three short minutes,” the officer said. “A little bit more or a little bit less. There are five hundred such periods in a day. Think of that, Poznan. Think of that day after day, and imagine what can be done if delicacy were not a factor, if I was not interested in sending you back out as pretty as when you came in.” The officer put his jacket on and began to button it up. “I do not have your boy here. But now I promise you, my own search begins right now. I’d very much like some time alone with him. All this to tell you, Mr. Poznan, you and your wife do not help anyone. You make things worse. And no parent should be out making things worse for a son.”

Kaddish wanted only to sleep this day off. With small painful steps, with a grinding headache behind his eyes and a feeling of sickness that he couldn’t isolate, Kaddish pushed through their always-open apartment door.

Lillian stood with a drink, facing him. Kaddish had the sense that he’d stepped into a conversation they’d already started. She took a sip. He wiped his lips against his sleeve. Kaddish didn’t think he’d ever seen her holding a whiskey in her hand.

Kaddish wanted to tell her everything, to tell his wife that he’d been tortured at the police station, and tell her what the officer had threatened to do to their son. He wanted to bend his stiff neck and lean his head on Lillian’s shoulder. If he did that he knew he’d tell, and if he told he didn’t think Lillian would live through the night. She wouldn’t survive, Kaddish thought. Not three times three minutes of considering the fate that had befallen their son.

He kept his lips pressed together and tried to communicate as best he could by looking into her eyes.

“I got fired,” Lillian said. She took another sip. “Gustavo let me go.”

Kaddish felt his legs start to shake. He didn’t say a word. “That’s it?” Lillian said.

It seemed that it was. Kaddish walked right past her, down the hallway, his mouth full of blood.

NOT SINCE THE NIGHT
of the abduction had Kaddish stood so solemnly before Pato’s books. He first tried to bring to mind the three missing volumes, the ones that had disappeared down the elevator shaft along with his son. Then he went about trying to cull with new eyes. He wasn’t after contraband. He was looking for anything that might link Pato to one of his friends. Kaddish found a humor magazine with a classmate’s name written on the back. He found the class portrait where Lillian had left it and placed it on top of the magazine in his tool bag. This he lifted with a moan, so sore and stiff was he from the beating, and carried into Pato’s room. He didn’t know how he’d swing his hammer in this state, let alone climb over the cemetery wall. Kaddish had managed to get a new job.

It wasn’t yet midnight and he hoped when the witching hour came he’d feel a touch better. He took a deep swig from a glass of Lillet he’d left by Pato’s bed. A few more hours of drinking and he could at least guarantee he wouldn’t feel as much.

Kaddish found the address book on the stereo and then gave the room a thorough turning over. In the sock drawer he found a tiny black book with first names and phone numbers inside. He found one albumless album cover among Pato’s records. It had a lump in its center. Kaddish
stuck his hand in and came up with a bag of marijuana, half a joint, and a pipe. He pocketed the joint and put the rest back. Kaddish figured if something was made to be smoked he’d likely be good at it, and if it eased any of his sufferings he’d be thankful for the help. There was a stack of photos of Pato and his friends in a shoe box. Kaddish could hardly bear to add it to the pile. Taped to the wall next to the bed was a picture of Rafa and Pato hanging from a goalpost. That one he left where it was.

Kaddish fished out the joint and smoked it. Everything still hurt, but it all hurt a little less. His troubles stayed the same, though he did sense that the world they took place in was neither as cruel nor as ruthless as before. And he felt tired. He thought hard, trying to focus, wondering if he could trust himself not to pass out for the night. He decided he couldn’t and then tried to find a comfortable position on Pato’s bed. His left side was no better than his right. If he turned his head either way his tongue would bleed. He ended up planting two feet on the floor and lying with his shoulders pinned against the mattress, as if he’d been sitting on the edge of the bed and someone had put a hand to his forehead and pushed him straight back. In this position, if there was still blood it seemed to take care of itself. Kaddish got up to put a record on. He spent the next few hours listening to Pato’s music through the headphones and trying to make heads or tails of it, to glean even the most basic meaning from the words.

Wary of the clanking from his tool bag and the sound of his lumbering step, Kaddish was almost at the front door when Lillian gave him a fright. She was in her chair in the living room, awake in the darkness, not asleep in their bedroom as he’d thought. “Be careful,” Lillian said, leaving him doubly surprised. It was a sentiment she’d never expressed when he went off to the cemetery before. She didn’t say anything about the fact that he’d taken a job.

“You’re still awake?” Kaddish said.

“You wouldn’t believe the subtle changes that take place on our street, even when not a thing moves.”

Kaddish put down his bag and stepped in front of it, an extra measure. There was no way Lillian could see what he’d stuffed inside.

“You didn’t tell me,” she said, “that you got a new customer.”

“The woman swore she’d pay cash,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll have money to line our pockets. And I still have to figure what to do with that gold.”