Tepel made a list of everyone he knew who claimed to be a cabalist, read Zohar, or talked intelligently about Cabala, or even mysticism. Then he looked at the list and crossed out names. Six were left and he called them all. Four of the men said they’d be glad to see him for lunch, tea, whatever he wanted; the fifth wouldn’t think of it until he knew what it was about, and Tepel couldn’t bring himself to say the word golem on the phone. When he called the sixth he got a tinny female voice intoning, “The number you have reached is not a working number. The number you have reached is not a working number.” There was no forwarding number, and as the refrain went on and on he remembered Buchenwald more clearly than he had in years, and he slammed the phone down, opened his desk drawer, took out a fresh bottle of brandy, and took a long swallow. He looked at the name of his old friend from Forest Hills that no one would ever see again, and he thought that once he died no one would know who Tepel was after a few years either. He drank more and thought about oblivion; then he told himself that thinking about oblivion was bullshit and he put the bottle away and went downstairs across the big crowded floor to the tiny locked men’s room. No one greeted him as he went, no one waved as he came back. He had entered oblivion without even knowing it. The camps were nothing compared to Forty-­seventh Street for making people disappear.

He called Garfield.

“Moshe Benzer’ll see us at noon, so you better get your ass here; Marty Erent’s meeting us at three, and Sol Weiser at five.”

They met Benzer at the upstairs luncheonette of the big exchange. It was dairy so they could have cream in their coffee and butter on their rolls. Benzer had sturgeon and eggs, the most expensive thing on the menu, and he ate all of it before Garfield even tasted one grape. Garfield decided he didn’t like Benzer and he found himself hoping, as he listened to the short fat man bitch about gas, diamond floor prices, taxes, the goyim, the shvartzes, that he didn’t have the answer they were looking for. Any ritual this man recounted would be tainted. He didn’t have to worry. Tepel couldn’t bring himself to tell Benzer what they wanted, so Garfield had to do it and as soon as he said the word golem, Benzer laughed and called him Dr. Frankenstein. Then he switched it to Dr. Finkelstein, which he thought was hysterical, and he laughed and spit all the time Garfield was trying to finish his fruit salad and pay the check.