He half slid down the short bank and stood on a narrow stone shelf above the river. It was clear, the rain had stopped, there was no fog and he could see the lights on the Jersey shore and on the bridge. He stood at the edge of the shelf so the river was only a few feet below him, and he bowed his head. He didn’t pray. He looked into the water instead and thought that sturgeon were living there again, and shad, then he turned out the pockets of his jacket and trousers, symbolically brushing sins out of his clothes into the water. He brushed lint out of them, and crumbs of tobacco; they made a small scum on the river, which was gone in an instant. He unrolled his cuffs and brushed them into the water, too, then took off his jacket and flapped it over the river. Then, still holding his jacket over the fast current, he said in Hebrew, “Cast all our sins into the depths of the sea; and may You cast all the sins of Your people . . . the house of Israel . . . into a place where they will not be remembered, or visited, or ever again come to mind.”

Later that night, after his daughters had gone back home to Scarsdale and Hartsdale with their husbands and children and his wife had made her last phone call and gone to sleep, he went into the clean kitchen that still smelled of honey, and, with just the moonlight to show him where things were, he prepared a box of food—a jar of honey, a wrapped piece of honey cake, chicken, and a plastic container of tsimmes—to take to Ossining tomorrow, to his brother Meyer who was serving a life sentence for murder.

† Bastards.

‡ Bargain.

§ Grandmother’s.

4

Chapter 4

They found knives in the lake in the park, but they were clean and could have come from anywhere. They searched the boys’ houses while their mothers trailed them from room to room followed by a procession of children, and found nothing. They searched the clubhouse and found some grass, dirty pictures, comic books, beer, and a guitar with a broken string. Hawkins looked out of the basement window at the blank wall in front of it, and plucked the dead-­sounding strings. It was the last day of formal mourning and after the search he went to Levy’s.

The apartment was quiet except for Oshevsky at the door, and the circle of men. But the circle was smaller, and Hawkins realized that Luria and Fineman were missing. Walinsky said he didn’t know where they were, and Dworkin was asleep in his chair with his hands folded in front of him.