Free Don't Ever Get Old by Daniel Friedman Page A

that beneath my gruff exterior, I was some kind of softy. Every drunk who beat his girlfriend to death, every junkie who did a murder to get a fix, every arrogant asshole who thought he could make some problem disappear into the Mississippi River; each believed his situation was surrounded by mitigating circumstances. Surely I would weep to know such pain. So, hanging over the abyss, they all confessed unto Buck and threw themselves upon my mercy.
    They thought I’d understand. And maybe they were right. Maybe I did understand. But I didn’t forgive.
    â€œTell me what to do, Mr. Schatz,” said Lawrence Kind.
    I laid a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Maybe you should pray.”
    Then I shut the door in his face and went back to bed.
    â€œWhat was that all about?” Rose asked, half-asleep.
    â€œNext time you decide to make some new friends, you can leave me out of it,” I told her.

 
    11
    About seven hours later, while I was sipping coffee and looking at the paper, the biggest Russian I ever saw showed up at my house and said he wanted to get to know me.
    He didn’t need to ring the bell, like Kind had. He just pounded with his meaty fist, and the sound rolled like a thunderclap through the house.
    â€œMr. Buckshot,” he said when I opened the door. “My name is Yitzchak Steinblatt.”
    He was fully six and a half feet and maybe three hundred twenty pounds of thick, rubbery features, dense muscle, and bristly black hair, topped with a yarmulke. He smiled at me the way a grizzly bear might smile at a salmon.
    Interesting.
    â€œPleasure to meet you, Yid’s Cock,” I said.
    â€œI am from Israeli Ministry for Diaspora Affairs. I work to maintain the special bond between the Jews of America and the state of Israel. I have come to spend time with Jews of the American South, and I am told, in Memphis, I must speak to Mr. Buckshot. They say you know everyone.”
    This was true. “When you’ve been around, you get around.”
    He enveloped my hand with a monstrous paw and shook it with ursine enthusiasm.
    â€œCareful there, big guy,” I said. “I’m on a blood thinner, you know. I bruise pretty easily.”
    â€œI am very sorry.”
    â€œWhy don’t you come on in, and have a cup of coffee.” No reason to be inhospitable, I figured.
    â€œRose,” I called out. “We have a visitor from the Israeli government.”
    She came in from the kitchen and sized up the Russian for a moment.
    â€œI’ll put on a fresh pot.”
    We sat at the kitchen table. Steinblatt took his coffee with lots of milk and three packets of Sweet’n Low. I drank mine black and bitter. We didn’t speak for a moment. The kitchen was nice in the morning. The window by the table opened out onto Rose’s garden, and we got a lot of sunlight through it.
    I was glad for the quiet; I needed to decide how to treat this guy. The Israeli Diaspora Ministry seemed like a public relations department, but I figured its operatives probably carried diplomatic credentials. “Diaspora” was the term Israelis used to describe all the Jews who didn’t live in Israel, and there were Jews everywhere—all over the United States, in every country in Europe, even in China. An affiliation like that would really let a guy travel.
    I looked at the way those big, sinewy hands folded around the coffee mug, and I considered all possible implications of Avram Silver’s good job with the Israeli government. Forty-eight hours had elapsed since the former Nazi hunter hung up his phone on me and Tequila. Had he set this behemoth loose on us?
    â€œSo when did you make aliyah?” I asked.
    â€œI immigrated to the Jewish homeland in 1992,” Steinblatt said.
    â€œRight after the Soviet Union collapsed.”
    â€œYes. It was tumultuous time. I feared for the safety of my family.”
    â€œBecause you were Jews?”
    He paused a tick