The Shadow Man (4 page)

‘Lock the door,’ he said.

‘I could be wrong,’ she said hesitantly. ‘It’s possible. I could have been wrong, correct?’

‘Anything is possible, Mrs Millstein. The point is, we will sort it all out.’

‘Until tomorrow, then,’ she replied, nodding gratefully.

He stepped into the hallway and turned back just long enough to catch his neighbor’s wan smile as she closed the door behind him. He waited until he heard the sound of the dead-bolt lock clicking shut.

Simon Winter walked out into the courtyard of the Sunshine Arms and let the sticky night air cover him. A weak street lamp from beyond the apartment’s entrance threw a thin shaft of light onto the statue of the cherub, making it glisten as if wet. The darkness surrounding him seemed rich, thick as coffee. He had an odd, droll thought: Well, if you’re not going to kill yourself, you might as well get something to eat. Will it be death or chicken tonight?

He did not think himself particularly amusing, and decided to head out, rapidly considering potential places to get some food. He took a step forward, then another,

then he paused. He turned and looked back at Sophie

Millstein’s apartment. The curtains were drawn. He could

hear the sound of a television playing loudly coming from

another apartment. This mingled with some laughing

voices coming from down the street. He could hear a

motorcycle accelerate in high-pitched whine from several

blocks away. Everything was, he insisted, as it should be.

Not perfect, but familiar. It is a night like any other. It is

hot. There is a breeze that cools nothing. The tropical sky

blinks with stars.

He insisted to himself that there was nothing unusual in the world at all except for an old woman’s memories of nightmare. But we all have those, he thought. He tried to reassure himself with the ordinariness of the world around him, but was only partly successful. He found himself peering into the shadows, looking for shapes, listening for telltale noises, behaving like a man suddenly afraid he was being watched, worried that he was being pursued. He shook his head to dislodge the sensation of dread that overcame him, chastised himself for showing the uncertainty of age and strode determinedly past the cherub in the dry fountain. He was overcome suddenly with the desire to walk, to try and put distance between him and his neighbor’s fears.

He stepped forward quickly, wondering, for just an instant, if death, when it arrived, was like the night.

Sophie Millstein peeked around the edge of the curtain, watching Simon Winter disappear into the darkness of the courtyard. Then she turned away and slumped down into her easy chair. Almost immediately the large gray and white cat leapt into her lap.

‘Mr Boots, did you miss me?’

She stroked the soft fur on the nape of the cat’s neck as it settled in.

‘You shouldn’t get too comfy,’ she warned. ‘I’ve still got things to do.’

The cat, as cats will, ignored this and merely began purring.

Sophie Millstein rested her hand on the cat’s fur and suddenly thought herself exhausted. She told herself that it would be all right for her to just shut her eyes for an instant, but when she did, she found herself enmeshed in a tangle of nervousness, as if closing her eyes reawakened fear, instead of bringing comfort. She put her hand to her forehead and wondered if she were perhaps coming down with something. She thought she felt hot, and she cleared her throat several times harshly, as if checking for telltale signs of congestion. She took a deep breath.

‘You’ve had an easy life, Mr Boots,’ she said to the cat. ‘Someone has always taken care of you. Warm and dry home. Plenty of food. Entertainment. Affection. Anything a cat could want.’

She abruptly slid her hand beneath the cat and pushed him from her lap. She forced herself to rise. She looked down at the cat, which despite its abrupt

erection, rubbed itself up against her leg.

‘I saved you,’ she said bitterly, surprising herself with

her own anger. ‘That man put you and all the rest of the

litter into that bag and was going to throw you into the

water He didn’t want kittens. No one wanted kittens.

There were too many kittens and everyone in the world

hated kittens and no home would have any of you and so

he was going to kill all of you, but I stopped him and took

just you out of the bag. I could have chosen one of the

others. I had my hand around one of the others, but I let

it go because it scratched me. So it was you I grabbed, and

so you’ve had an easy life, and all the others, they went into

thebag and the bag went into the water and they

drowned.’

She pushed Mr Boots away with her foot. ‘Lucky cat,’ she hissed sharply. ‘Luckiest cat in the

world.’

Sophie Millstein walked into her kitchen and began to

straighten the shelves, making certain that every label on

every can was face forward, lined up by size, ordered by

group, so that a tin of olives wouldn’t be next to a can of

tomato soup. When those goods were properly placed, she

did the same to the perishables, imposing military precision on the refrigerator. The final item she inspected was

a founder fillet which she had earlier intended to broil for

her own dinner, but she was no longer hungry. For a

moment she hesitated, fearful that the fish would not keep.

She decided that she could cook the fish in the morning and have it for the next day’s lunch.

The cat had followed her and meowed. The noise irritated her.

‘All right. All right. Coming.’

She opened a can of cat food. Manipulating the opener was difficult for her, and her hand stung with sudden soreness. She told herself to march down to the discount hardware store in the morning and purchase an electric opener. She set the food out for the cat and left it eating.

In her bedroom, she stared at the picture of her late husband.

‘You should be here,’ she said, reproaching him. ‘You had no right to leave me alone.’

Sophie Millstein marched back into the small living room and sat down again. She felt abruptly as if she were caught out on the street in the moments before a thunderstorm crashed down, when impetuous, sharp surgical gusts of wind sliced through the humid stillness, assaulting her from all sides.

‘I’m tired,’ she said out loud. ‘I should take a pill and go to bed.’

But instead she rose, tramped into the kitchen, seized the telephone and dialed her son’s number on Long Island. She let the phone ring once before hanging it up, instantly deciding that she didn’t want to speak with her only child. He will just insist again that I move out into some old people’s home where I don’t know a soul, she told herself. This is my home.

Sophie Millstein went to the tap, filled a glass with water and took a long drink. It tasted brackish, metallic. She made a face. ‘Miami Beach special,’ she said. She wished she’d remembered to purchase some bottled water at the store. She poured some back in the sink, then took the

remainder in and filled up the water container in the bird

cage. The parakeet chirped once or twice. She wondered

briefly why she’d never bothered to name the bird, as she

had her cat. She wondered if this was somehow unfair,

then doubted it, and returned to the kitchen to rinse out

her glass and place it on the drying rack. There was a small

window above the sink, and she glanced out into the night.

She told herself that she was familiar with every shape and

shadow that she could see; everything was in exactly the

same spot that it had been the night before and the night

before that and every night for more than ten years. Still,

she continued to examine the darkness, watching each

corner of the backyard for movement, like a sentry on

patrol.

She turned off the faucet and listened. There were a few distant sounds of traffic. Upstairs, Finkel was shuffling about. A television was on too loud;

that would be the Kadoshes, she thought, because they are too stubborn to turn up their hearing aids. She continued to look out the window. She let her eyes

read each shaft of light, study each dark spot. For a moment she was astonished at the number of places she thought someone could hide without being seen: the corner where the orange tree lurked next to the old chain-link fence; the shadow where the garbage cans were

placed.

No, she told herself, it is all as it always is. Nothing different. Nothing out of place.

ŚShe breathed in hard and went back to the living room.

Television, she told herself. She flicked on her set and

settled into a chair. A situation comedy was on, and for a

few minutes she tried to follow the jokes, and forced

herself to laugh at the same moments that the canned

laughter did. She let her head drift down into her hands, and as the program continued in front of her, she shivered, as if cold, but she knew that wasn’t the reason.

He’s dead, she said to herself. He’s not here.

She wondered, for a moment, whether he had ever really existed. Who was that I saw? she asked herself. It could have been anybody, especially with that hat pulled down over his forehead and the dark overcoat. And they shut the door so quickly after he yelled, I hardly had a chance to

see.

But she knew this was untrue. It was him. She felt herself fill with bitter anger. It was always him. Day after day. Hour after hour. He had been there, even when they had thought they were relatively safe. But they weren’t. He’d stalked them like some particularly patient and coldhearted hunter, waiting, biding his time, until the right moment. And then he’d taken their money first, then their freedom, and with it, their lives.

Sophie Millstein felt hatred reverberate within her. She spoke out loud:

‘I should have killed him then. If I had known …’ Then she stopped and realized she’d had no chance. She told herself: You were only a child - what did you know of killing?

She answered her own question harshly: not much then. But you learned soon enough, didn’t you?

On the television, an advertisement for a beer came on the screen, and for an instant she watched muscular young men and nubile young women cavort around a pool. No one really looks like that, she thought. She realized when she was the same age as the models in the advertisement, she weighed less than seventy pounds and resembled someone that had already died.

But I didn’t die, she reminded herself.

He must have thought we would all die, but I didn’t.

She put her head down in her hands once again.

Why didn’t he die too? she wondered.

How could he have lived through the war? Who would save him? Not the Germans he worked for. When he was no longer useful, they would have shipped him off to Auschwitz as well. Not the Allies or the Russians, who would have prosecuted him as a war criminal. Certainly not the Jews whom he so eagerly helped along the road to death. How could he have lived?

She shook her head at the impossible thoughts that filled

her.

He had to die. They all did, and he died right alongside the rest of them. It had to be that way.

She repeated this to herself: He had to die. He had to die. Then she shortened it, mentally, simply to: He’s dead. He’s dead. He cannot be alive. Not here. Not on Miami Beach. Not surrounded by the few people who managed |to survive.

For an instant she thought she might become ill. Sophie Millstein, filled with an old and misshapen fear, stood up. The characters in the television show were all laughing and the audience was laughing at them.

“Leo,’ she said out loud. She walked to the telephone and swiftly dialed the rabbi’s number. When she heard the voice on the answering machine respond, she hung up. She looked down at her wristwatch and thought: still too early for Mr Silver and Frieda Kroner. They won’t be back until after midnight. Her finger hesitated above the dial, and then she punched in Simon Winter’s number. She expected he would pick the phone up immediately, and she tried to think what she could say beyond the fact that she was still frightened, but all she could think of was Simon Winter’s pistol and how it might protect her.

The phone continued to ring, unanswered. After a second an answering machine clicked on: ‘You’ve reached Simon Winter. Leave a message at the beep.’

She waited, and after hearing the electronic signal, said:

‘Mr Winter? It’s Sophie Millstein. I just wanted … Oh, it’s just … well, Mr Winter, I just wanted to thank you again. I will speak with you tomorrow.’

She hung up, slightly relieved. He will have some good advice, she thought. He is a very nice man, with a level head and plenty of smarts. Maybe not as much as Leo, but he will know what to do.

She wondered where he’d disappeared to. He probably just went out to get a bite to eat, she explained to herself. He’ll be back shortly. He’s out just the same as Rabbi Rubinstein. Everything tonight is normal. Just like any other night.

Sophie Millstein wondered abruptly: Mr Herman Stein, who were you? Why did you write that letter? Who did you see?

She took a deep breath, only to have it repair her nervousness.

She thought in sudden panic: I’m all alone.

Then, just as swiftly, she insisted to herself that she was mistaken. The Kadoshes, old Finkel upstairs, and before too long Simon Winter, would be back from his meal; they would all be surrounding her, and she would be fine.

She nodded to herself as if insisting on the safety of her observation. She took a step back toward the television. The comedy had been replaced by a darker drama.

Who else could it have been? she suddenly demanded.

The question made her breathe in sharply again. It stung her imagination, and she swiftly tried to anesthetize her feelings with complacencies.

Why, it could have been anyone. Another old man on