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

before answering, and I saw feral intelligence flickering in his dark, deep-set eyes.
    â€œYes.”
    He had to be ex-Russian military or former KGB. An undercover Mossad assassin, right there at my damned kitchen table. Or maybe he was a simple flack for the state of Israel who just happened to be unusually large. My doctor had warned me to report any paranoid feelings; they were an early sign of dementia among the elderly.
    I cleared my throat. “So, who was it again who told you to come by and talk to me?”
    â€œI spoke to someone with the Memphis Jewish Federation,” he said.
    â€œYou didn’t talk to Avram Silver?”
    His face hung slack and expressionless. “I don’t know who that is.”
    I took a long sip from my coffee.
    â€œLet me tell you a story,” I said, wagging a finger at him. “I used to be a police detective, back in the prehistoric days, before I got old. Did you know that?”
    â€œI did not.”
    â€œA rookie cop recently asked me how I could tell when an investigation was heading in the right direction. It’s an interesting question, one I have been thinking about. Part of it is intuition, and part of it is instinct. I also know I am making progress when facts that don’t seem to relate to anything start fitting together into a logical story.”
    He nodded. “Makes sense.”
    â€œBut mostly, I know I am on the right track when some kind of heavy shows up to try to intimidate me.”
    â€œHeavy?”
    â€œYeah. An enforcer. A goon. Muscle. Meat on the hoof. You follow?”
    His expression was unchanged, as far as I could tell. I squinted to make sure, since his face was so hairy.
    â€œI think I understand,” he said.
    â€œSometimes they make overt threats,” I continued, keeping an even, conversational tone. “Sometimes they behave in a friendly or at least polite manner, while still managing to convey that unmistakable menacing subtext. Sometimes they don’t even talk to me; they just show up and give me the stink-eye.”
    The Russian set the coffee cup carefully on his saucer.
    â€œI remember this one case. Somebody had strangled a girl in a cheap apartment in a run-down part of midtown, and I liked a highly placed aide to the mayor as the killer.”
    â€œThis sounds like story out of detective novel,” said Steinblatt. His voice was flat and calm and toneless. He was a hard guy to get a read on.
    â€œI know, right? But these powerful guys always had mistresses, and the mistresses always threatened to tell the wives, and these guys always killed the mistresses. Whenever we showed up at an apartment or a hotel room with a dead girl inside it, somebody would have to check to see if the mayor had an alibi.”
    â€œSo what did you do about this politician?”
    â€œWell, you know, I am a man of class and subtlety, so I kicked in the door of his house at five in the morning, threw the cuffs on him in front of his kids, and frog-walked him into the police station in his bathrobe, so all the press I’d tipped off could take his picture.”
    Yitzchak flashed his grizzly bear grin. “I imagine he didn’t like that.”
    â€œI suppose not,” I said. “But, since I didn’t have any evidence, I had to cut him loose after twenty-four hours, and the same afternoon, a heavy showed up outside the police station, a guy about your size, actually. He didn’t say anything to me, but when he saw me notice him, he just nodded and cracked his knuckles.”
    I glanced at the Russian’s big hands, resting on my kitchen table.
    â€œThe next morning, I stopped at the coffee shop for a cup and a short stack, and there was the same guy, standing across the street. And he nodded, and cracked his knuckles. And when I left work, there he was again, nodding and cracking. I went bowling with some of my buddies, and this guy was outside the bowling alley, with his goddamn