No one had ever beaten him up since then. Not for twenty-five years—a quarter century. On the street, whenever he saw a fight brewing, he immediately turned around and walked away; if someone started getting smart with him at a bar and put his fists up, he apologized at once and got out of there.

He pushed the chest of drawers in front of the apartment door. But over the next few days he didn’t hear anything more from them.

Had they given up on him? Could they have realized that he was the wrong man for the job? On the other hand, if they didn’t need him anymore, wouldn’t that mean he was in real danger now?

He didn’t leave the apartment. He called the grocer’s, and the boy brought him bread, beer, sandwiches. He wrapped himself in a blanket, pulled it tight, and felt a pain coming on in the darkness of the apartment that was old, much older than what he was dealing with now. Outside, the train rattled by, voices from the street drifted past. He wrapped himself tighter in the feeling that he was falling; he had only to close his eyes and something pulled him out of this world.

When they turned up again a week later he was almost relieved, but he made a point of acting standoffish. “So here you are again, you assholes.”

This time Max strutted pompously around the room. He also fiddled with the lampshade and the sockets and ordered Josef to turn Duke Ellington up louder, saying that was the only reason he put up with this jungle music—if someone was listening in on them this music would drown everything out.

Josef kept something in his mouth at all times—a cigarette, a toothpick, gum, later pork dumplings from the Chinese take-out place. He didn’t want to talk. Over in the chair, Ludwig took a drink from his flask every few minutes. He sat there and scribbled numbers onto his notepad, on his knees the open book.

Josef went into the kitchen, put water on to boil, and peeled an orange. The acid hurt the nail of his index finger, which he bit sometimes. He ran some water over his hands in the sink, and suddenly Max was standing next to him. “They pulled Ludwig out of a Berlin prison. A pickpocket and crook. He’s stolen from me too.”

“This keeps getting better and better.” Hands still wet, he opened the cabinet door with his pinky to grab himself a cup. “Why would America let a criminal into the country?”