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If so, tell me all about it at once. Treat me like a family doctor. Send me a quick signal—and then you can sit back and watch me making mincemeat of them for you. It’ll be a pleasure.
Listen to me, Alex: The fact is, there’s no reason for me to get involved with your lunatic schemes. I’ve got a nice juicy case on the launching pad right now (concerning the property of the Russian Orthodox Church), and what I make from that, even if I lose it, is worth approximately twice the widow’s mite you have made up your mind to donate as a Passover gift to North African Jewry or the Association for Aging Nymphomaniacs. Go fuck yourself, Alex. Just give me my final instructions, and I’ll hand over whatever you like, whenever you like, to whomever you like. To each according to his greed.
Incidentally, the fact is, Sommo does not whine greedily. On the contrary, he speaks very nicely, in soft, rounded tones, with a smiling, didactic refinement, like a Catholic intellectual. These people have apparently undergone, on the way from Africa to Israel, a thoroughgoing refit in Paris. Outwardly he seems almost more European than you or me. In a nutshell, he could give Emily Post a few lessons in polite behavior.
I ask him, for example, if he has any notion why Professor Gideon is suddenly handing him the keys to the safe. And he smiles at me mildly, a sort of “come on, now” smile, as if I have put a truly childish question to him, beneath his dignity and mine, refuses to take one of my Kents and offers me one of his own Europas, but deigns—possibly as a gesture of Jewish solidarity—to accept a light from me. And he expresses his thanks and shoots me a sort of sharp look, which his gold-rimmed spectacles magnify like the look of an owl at midday: “I am sure Professor Gideon could answer that question better than I can, Mr. Zakheim.”
I contain myself and ask him whether a gift of the magnitude of a hundred thousand dollars does not at the very least arouse his curiosity. To which he replies: “Indeed it does, sir,” and shuts up like a clam. I wait for maybe twenty seconds for him to say something more before giving in and inquiring whether he has by chance any theory of his own on the matter. To which he replies calmly that, yes, he does indeed, but that, with my permission, he would prefer to hear my own theory.
Well, at this juncture I determine to fire at point-blank range; I put on the grim Zakheim face I use in cross-examinations, and shoot, with little pauses for added effect between the words: “Mr. Sommo. If you don’t mind, my theory is that somebody is putting strong pressure on my client. What you and your friends would call ‘hush money.’ And I am tempted to discover as quickly as possible who, and how, and why.” That ape, unabashed, smiles a sweet, sanctimonious smile at me and replies: “His sense of shame, Mr. Zakheim; that’s the only thing that’s putting pressure on him.” “Shame? On account of what?” I ask, and the answer is ready on the tip of his honeyed tongue even before I’ve finished asking: “For his sins, sir.” “What sins, for example?” “Putting others to shame, for example. Putting people to shame in Judaism is tantamount to shedding their blood.”
“And what are you, sir? Are you the tax collector? The bailiff?”
“Me?” he answers, without batting an eyelid. “My role is a purely symbolic one. Our Professor Gideon is a man of letters. He has a world-wide reputation. He is enormously respected. One might say admired. The only thing is, until he has put right what he has done wrong, all his good deeds count for nothing. Because they are built on sin. Now he is smitten with remorse, and it would seem that he is finally beginning to seek the path to repentance.”
“And you are the keeper of the gate of repentance, Mr. Sommo? You stand there and sell tickets?”
“I married his wife,” he says, fixing me, like a projector, with his eyes magnified three times in