Decker took this in. “That’s good. How big a problem?”

“A real, real big problem.” Out came the grin. “She was part of Darrell’s operation. Now Darrell has to move on. So she’s a problem.” She snapped her fingers several times. “What’s the word he used? A libility?”

“Liability,” Decker corrected. “How much of a liability?”

Erin looked the other way. “Something that has to be taken care of. Darrell doesn’t like things hanging over his head. He likes…permanent solutions.”

“Meaning?”

She extended her first two fingers to form the barrel of a gun, then pantomimed the shot using a thumb for a trigger. Her grin turned into a savage smile aimed right at her aunt. “What the hell! I hated the bitch!”

33

He was one of those old men who had that incongruous young man’s hair: thick and luxurious except it was as white as Crisco. Way back when, he must have been a genuine blond. With his pale blue eyes and his pallid complexion, he could have easily passed for one of Hitler’s Übermenschen. Perhaps that was why he lasted so long before he was crammed into a railroad car and headed toward certain death. His existence was a testament to miracles.

Having lived a long life, Oscar Adler wore the battle decorations of age, face and hands riddled with liver spots. His forehead held several shiny pink depressions—scar tissue left over from the removal of growths. Rina’s father had had several basal-cell carcinomas removed from his face because he was also very fair. Both of her parents were light-complexioned and light-eyed, but her mother had always made a point of wearing a hat when she was in the sun. It had paid off. Mama had beautiful skin.

Oscar was older than both Mama and Papa. His cheeks clung to the skeletal structure underneath as tightly as a rubber mask. His eyes were sunken and framed by jaundiced folds of skin, the irises almost pinpoints under thick glasses. Remarkably, he still had his own teeth even if some of them were chipped, and all of them were as yellow as egg yolks. Rina knew about his teeth because Oscar was smiling as he slurped soup.

The man had a hearty appetite. He had managed to get down an entire rib of flanken. On the downside, he coughed back a third of it.

“You’re eating too fast,” she scolded.

“Nyaaah,” he answered back.

“You’re taking too big bites—”

“A bissel fleisch.”

“Not a bissel. Asach. Too much.”

He waved her off and tried to wolf down another piece of meat. Again Oscar started hacking. Rina gently patted his back. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah—”

She picked up the spoon. “Esse de kraut.”

“No protein in the cabbage.”

His voice was high. He had to strain to get the words out of his larynx.

“But lots of good vitamins,” Rina told him. “And it tastes good, right?”