No More To Lose

NO MORE TO LOSE

A Novella

Dr. Gregory Steinberg

PROLOGUE

He had noticed the erratically swerving headlights in his rearview mirror for the past few minutes. Either the driver was drunk, on drugs, or he (or she) was texting. Given that it was 4:50 am on a Wednesday, it was an even bet all around. In any event, the car was lurching unpredictably from side to side. And it was getting closer.

There was the usual scanty band of early morning commuters on New Jersey’s Route 206 heading south towards Interstate 80. Like him, most of them would be heading to New York City via one of the Hudson River crossings. A few would peel off towards various cities and towns in eastern New Jersey.

There were not many traffic lights to slow down the steady flow of vehicles, and most of them were green. The one ahead however had just turned red.

He took his foot off the gas pedal, and the Cayenne S began to slow down. The weaving headlights behind lunged closer. He was beginning to feel increasingly sure that this was not going to turn out well.

The red light was only two hundred yards ahead, and he was still traveling over forty miles an hour. There was no car in front of him. Gently, but firmly, he applied the brakes. Hoping that the driver behind would notice his brake lights coming on, he looked up at the rearview mirror. There was no visible change in chaos or speed.

Six seconds later, the Porsche came to a smooth stop. Three seconds after that, he heard the screeching of futile brakes being applied, followed almost immediately by the unnerving sound and feel of metal on metal as the car behind plowed inexorably into his rear bumper.

For the past six years, he had been waking up every weekday morning at 4 am in order to get to the Lincoln Tunnel no later than six. He was fifty-seven years old. So he was pretty tired. But not so tired that he wasn’t pissed off by what had just happened. Then he reminded himself that the driver might be on drugs, and therefore unpredictable. He took a deep breath, gripped the steering wheel tightly for a few seconds, and gathered himself. Slowly and carefully, he got out of the car. The other driver was already out of his vehicle, and was kneeling down, inspecting the site of impact. When he heard the Porsche’s door close, the driver straightened up and started walking forwards.

It was still dark, but there were a couple of streetlights overhead, so he was able to see fairly well. The guy approaching him looked to be white, late twenties or early thirties, and compact. He was wearing jeans and a jacket, both of which fit well and looked expensive. He moved easily, like an athlete.

If this thing got ugly, it was not going to be a lot of fun.

The other car was a late-model Mercedes C class sedan with New York plates. The driver was holding a cell phone in his left hand. He appeared to be smiling.

“What the hell is wrong with you? I saw you weaving all over the road like a drunken idiot for at least a couple of miles.”

“Sorry man, my bad. I just got a call from my little sister, you know. She got all sorts of problems. Anyway, I got distracted and didn’t see you in time. Sorry.” His voice was even, friendly and fluent, with only a vague hint of his Balkan roots. “The good news is that it doesn’t look too bad, especially for you. These goddam German cars are built like tanks.” The driver put his cellphone away in an inside pocket of his jacket, and took out a wallet. He paused while he thumbed through it. “I know these Porsche service guys all rip you off, but I’m pretty sure this should cover it. Let’s see. Looks like about four grand.” The driver pulled a sheaf of crisp bills out of his wallet and held them out. Despite the dim light, it was clear that they were all hundreds.

What was this dude doing with several thousand dollars in cash, all in new hundred dollar bills, at five in the morning in the middle of nowhere New Jersey?

“Look, I’m just not comfortable with this. I’m going to call the cops.”

“Hey man, no need for that. It’s just a little fender bender. No big deal. Wait a minute. I think I may have some more cash here in another pocket.” He started rooting around in his pants pockets.

And why was he so clearly anxious to deal with this quickly and move on?

“Sorry buddy. This is not going to work for me. I’m calling the cops.” He pulled out his own cell phone, and started dialing 911. The other driver looked at him, quietly. He was no longer smiling.

The 911 operator answered after only two rings. He told her there had been a traffic accident and gave the approximate location. She asked if anyone was hurt, and then instructed him to wait for a squad car to arrive. It should only be a few minutes.

The other driver appeared to be listening intently. Abruptly, he turned around and walked briskly back to his car and got in. He started up the engine.

“Wait a minute buddy, you can’t just leave. The police will be here in a few minutes.”

The driver put the car into reverse, and, accompanied by the creaking sound of twisting steel, started moving slowly backwards.

Frantically, he turned the cell phone’s camera on and took two pictures of the now rapidly retreating license plate. The camera’s flash popped twice. For the second time that morning, he heard the screech of the Mercedes’ brakes.

The driver jumped out of his car, and started running towards him. As he was running, he reached into his jacket pocket.

Oh, shit. He’s got a gun.

The next instant, the driver’s face was right next to his. He could smell cigarettes. And alcohol. The driver’s eyes were still, dark, unblinking. Then he heard a click and felt something sharp against the left side of his chest.

“You’re gonna need to give me that phone shit head. Put it in my left hand now. Slowly. Don’t fuck around.” The driver pushed the tip of the knife in a little more. He could feel something warm trickling down his chest under his shirt.

He did as he was told.

“Good boy.”

The driver put the cell phone into his front pants’ pocket, and stepped back. The knife had somehow disappeared. The driver then took out his own cell phone and snapped two quick shots of the Cayenne’s rear license plate

The driver took out his wallet one more time, and again removed a sheaf of bills. This time he threw them on to the pavement between their feet.

“Take the money, motherfucker. Just tell them that I drove away, and you don’t know nothing. Don’t be a hero. Heroes just get dead. Remember, now I know who you are.”

The driver then turned, walked deliberately back to his Mercedes, got in, and drove off calmly.

He was still shaking when the state police arrived about five minutes later, but he was starting to feel better. The bleeding had stopped with firm pressure, but he would definitely need a new shirt and jacket.

It was decision time. He crossed the Rubicon.

“The guy took off after threatening me with a knife and cutting me a bit. He left me some money not to tell you guys anything. I took a picture of his license plate with my cell phone, but he took it away from me. But I remember the number…”

******

During the next seven years, in addition to turning sixty and more, he would opt for early retirement, bury his eighty-two year old mother after a long and miserable battle with Alzheimer’s, and, with his wife proudly at his side, watch his daughter with Down Syndrome graduate from high school despite the most vigorous assurances to the contrary by most of her early teachers and counselors. He would also be diagnosed with metastatic melanoma.

The driver spent the next seven years in prison. During that time, he heard that his father, whom he had not seen since the man had walked out on his mother and his four siblings when he was he was eight, was found beaten to death in an alley in Newark, his wife moved back to Serbia to live with her parents, and his two younger brothers jointly took over the day to day running of his Brooklyn based drug and money lending operation. He also spent a lot of time thinking about the guy in the Cayenne…

*****

PART I

It was ten o’clock in the morning on an unusually bright and warm March day in New York City. He eased himself back onto the pale green vinyl couch in the outpatient chemotherapy infusion suite at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center on York Avenue. The nurse – her name badge identified her as Sally Evans – was busy chattering away about nothing in particular while she checked the bags of poison that she was about to administer. She cross referenced the labels on the bags with the one on his wristband, and made sure that the intravenous infusion pump was working properly and set to the appropriate flow rate.

I wonder how often they actually wind up giving this shit by mistake to the wrong person….and at a retail price of well over $5,000 for each bag, that is just a bad day all around.

The nurse asked him to put on a mask. She then donned a pair of blue rubber gloves and, using a piece of gauze soaked in chloraprep, carefully cleaned the skin of his right upper chest overlying his port-a-cath. She took a needle with some tubing attached, and inserted the needle through the skin into the port. He barely felt anything.

God, that is so much better than the endless poking around for veins.

She attached a syringe to the tube and drew back until some blood appeared in the tubing. She then attached the first bag. The Opdivo infusion would take about thirty minutes, the Yervoy about ninety. Sally Evans had kept chattering away the whole time.

Jeez, I wish she would just shut up already. I am really not in the mood for this.

She turned the infusion pump on, and with a final, inappropriately cheerful farewell, she was gone. Finally. He lay his head back and closed his eyes. As had now become usual for him during these triweekly sessions, his mind started to wander.

This sucks. In fact, to quote that moron Trump, it sucks bigly. Until this, things had been going pretty well. There had been some ups and downs along the way, but, on balance, way more ups…

*****

Jacob Levine was born in 1954 in Matamoras, in northeastern Pennsylvania. Technically, he was born in New York, in Port Jervis, as there was no hospital in Matamoras. His parents had, with difficulty, emigrated from Georgia in 1947 after Stalin had clearly cemented himself as the absolute despotic ruler of post World War II Russia. His mother was a housewife who stayed home, cooked, cleaned, looked after the children, and only spoke English when forced to outside of the house. His father supported the family with the meager earnings of his one-man taxi business which served the surrounding rural counties of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. In retrospect, Jacob thought that his father was almost certainly dyslexic given his undoubted fundamental intellect yet significant difficulty with reading and writing in any language.

The family lived in a small, two bedroom ranch house on the outskirts of town. Jacob and his older brother Eli shared the second bedroom along with a beagle named Molly.

One of Jacob’s first clear memories was of playing in the snow with Molly, and her furiously chasing a large, red rubber ball that he had just received for his third birthday. Shortly after he turned five, Molly was run over and killed by a drunk driver just outside their house. Another of Jacob’s clear memories was that of his father standing on their tiny front porch, holding Molly’s limp, bloodied body in his arms, sobbing unconsolably. His parents never owned another dog.

*****

Eli

Jacob and Eli both attended the local public school in Matamoras, a simple enough choice for his parents as it was the only public school in Pennsylvania within twenty miles, and the only school of any kind that they could afford. At the time, there were less than ten other Jews in the entire Pennsylvania Delaware Valley school system, and virtually no other minorities of any description.

It did not take long for Jacob to get his first taste of anti-Semitism. He was seven years old and in second grade. He was on the school bus returning home. Sitting behind him were a couple of boys in fifth grade. One of them rapped Jacob on the head with a wooden ruler and added: “Take that you little kike Christ killer.” The other fifth-grader then chimed in: “Hitler was right. He should have finished all you dirty Jews off.” The two of them then burst into laughter, but not before they had hit him on the head with the ruler a few more times.

Jacob’s mother could see that he was upset when he got home but, because she could not speak English well, he felt he had to wait until his father got back from work later that evening. When the family was all sitting around the dinner table, Jacob turned to his father and said: “Dad, what is a kike Christ killer, and who was Hitler?” His father stopped chewing his potatoes and peered at him over his glasses. He had a strange look on his face. Very softly, he asked: “Where did you hear that Jacob?” Jacob knew there was a problem because his father always called him Jake. He recounted the incident on the school bus. His father listened intently. After a brief pause, he said: “I will go and speak to the school principal tomorrow morning. I will answer your questions after that. Now finish your dinner.”

Later that night, when they were both lying in their bunk beds, Eli turned over in the dark and whispered to Jacob. “Jake, a kike is a bad word that sort of means ‘dirty Jew’. And many Christians believe, mistakenly, that the Jews killed Jesus Christ. In fact, it was the Romans and some dude called Pontius Pilot or something. And Hitler is a very bad guy who started World War II. He was a Nazi, and the Nazis believed that they were better than anybody else, and that everybody else should be killed, especially the Jews. So he killed like six million of them, including little kids just like you and me. Look, I know Dad means well and is trying to help. But I know these guys in the school. They’re all Christians, and they’re all going to stick together. And they’re certainly not going to try to help any of us Jews. So, tell you what. Tomorrow, I’ll come home on your bus. You can point these little bastards out to me.”

The next morning, Jacob’s father went to see the school principal. The receptionist asked him whether he had an appointment. After hearing the negative response, she asked him the purpose of his visit. Jacob’s father said it involved an anti-Semitic incident with his seven-year-old son on the school bus. The receptionist looked Samuel Levine up and down like he was an exhibit at a freak show. She asked for his name, and had him spell it out for her as she slowly wrote it down on a small pad. Coolly, she then informed him that the principal was very busy that morning. Samuel Levine told her he would wait. There were two wooden chairs against the wall. He sat down on one, pulled a newspaper out of his coat pocket, and, with difficulty, started to read. After an hour, when it was clear that the receptionist had not even informed the principal of his presence, Samuel Levine got up from his chair and politely asked if she could find out how much longer it might be. With a barely repressed sigh of derision, the receptionist picked up the pad, heaved herself out of her chair, and knocked gently on the principal’s door. An unseen voice beckoned her in. She closed the door behind her, and Samuel Levine could only hear gentle murmurings. She returned to her post a few seconds later and, with a mirthless smile, informed him that it shouldn’t be too long now.

Another hour passed. The principal’s door opened, and a portly, balding, middle-aged man with a goatee appeared in the doorway. “Mr. Levine (he pronounced it so it rhymed with wine), I understand there may have been a problem with one of your children on the school bus.” The principal did not offer a handshake.

“Yes. It is actually ’Leveen’. Do you mind if we discuss this in private?”

Reluctantly, the principal stepped aside and followed Samuel back into his office. The principal set down behind his desk, put his elbows on the large blotter in front of him, and started slowly tapping his fingertips together. “So, what can I do for you Mr. Levine?” Again, it rhymed with vine (or was that now ‘swine’?) Samuel repeated what Jacob had told him. The principal stopped tapping his fingertips, and furrowed his brow.

“What would you like me to do exactly Mr. Levine? These are just young boys who are clearly too immature to fully understand what they were saying.”

“Surely, you’re not saying that you’re condoning this behavior, are you? This is America in 1962, not Nazi Germany in 1942.”

“There is no need to lecture me, sir. I’m perfectly aware of the time and place.”

“So, what are you planning to do about it?”

“Based on what you’re telling me, other than telling the two boys that they shouldn’t talk like that in the future, there is not much I can or should do.”

“I’m afraid that’s not acceptable. I’m going to have to take this matter to the district superintendent.”

“Do what you have to do Mr. Levine (now it definitely rhymed with swine). I’m quite confident that he too will see it my way. Good day, sir.”

That afternoon, Eli found a space on the bus on the other side of the aisle from Jacob. Jacob pointed out the two kids before the bus left the school grounds. They were sitting, as usual, just behind Jacob. The row of seats behind them was empty. Eli waited until the bus driver was concentrating on nosing his vehicle out into the main road. Casually, he moved across the aisle and sat down behind the two kids. The bus driver was still having difficulty negotiating his way onto the roadway. Eli stood up. Quickly, he put his left hand about six inches from one kid’s left ear and his right hand a similar distance from the other kids right ear. Then he rapidly moved his hands towards each other. The two kids’ heads collided with such force that Jacob imagined he saw sparks fly. Immediately, the two kids started bawling. Eli who was now hunched down in his seat and invisible to the bus driver hissed loudly enough for both kids to hear through their wails: “If either of you little shit bags do anything more to my little brother, the next time I’m going to rip your heads clean off.” Jacob was left alone after that. But his father never did answer his questions.

*****

Eli was almost four years older than Jacob, so, other than the incident on the school bus, the two brothers did not interact much at school. Eli was a voracious reader and, even from a young age, keenly interested in the world around him. He felt it was his responsibility to inculcate in his younger brother an understanding of world affairs. Like the talk on kikes, Christ killers, and Nazis, these seminars usually took place at night as they were lying in bed about to drift off to sleep. This was how, later that same year of 1962, Jacob learned about the Cuban missile crisis…

So, there are these guys called the Soviets, and they are mortal enemies of America. Well, the Soviets managed to build some rockets that could carry huge bombs. Unfortunately for them, they live in a place called Russia, which is actually near where mom and dad originally came from, but it’s very far away, and too far for their rockets to reach us. So they needed to find a place closer to America where they could put the rockets. There is this island called Cuba off the coast of Florida that’s run by some guy called Fidel Castro who’s actually a friend of the Soviets. Castro agreed to let the Soviets put their rockets on his island. This made everybody in America very nervous. In fact, I heard mom and dad began talking to themselves in hushed voices like this was maybe the end of the world. Anyway, our president, President Kennedy, who was actually a war hero in the Second World War, stood up to the Soviets and told them that he wouldn’t let them put their rockets in Cuba. Everything was pretty tense for a while, but the Soviets eventually backed off, so everything’s okay now.

In a subsequent conversation that occurred about a year later on November 22, 1963, Eli informed Jacob that John Kennedy, the hero president of the Cuban missile crisis, had been shot in the head and killed while he was riding with his wife in an open car in Dallas, Texas. Eli told him that it was a very sad day for everyone in America. Judging from their parents’ behavior that day, Jacob felt that Eli was probably right.

But Eli was not just about doom and gloom. He also told his younger brother about the wondrous changes taking place in rock and roll in the 1960’s. Like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, the Doors, Led Zeppelin. With the money that he had saved from helping neighbors mow their lawns in the summer and clear their driveways from snow and ice in the winter, Eli had managed to buy a cheap secondhand record player, and even develop a nascent record collection. As long as their father was out of the house – he abhorred rock ‘n’ roll music and wouldn’t allow it to be played anywhere within earshot – the two brothers could indulge their musical passions without reservation. Mom didn’t seem to mind too much either way, but it was never clear to either of the brothers whether she actually liked the music, was indifferent to it, or just going deaf in her old age.

In 1964, when Jacob was ten years old, his father splurged and brought home a small black-and-white television set which he proudly set up on the mantelpiece in the living room. It had rabbit ear antennae that Jacob and Eli were told never to touch on pain of instantaneous death. When their father was at home, the TV set was typically tuned to something boring like the news. However, when he was away driving his taxi, which thankfully was most of the time, the brothers were able to entertain themselves immensely. Eli’s two favorite shows were the Twilight zone with Rod Serling, and the Outer Limits. Jacob found them both to be a little too creepy. However, they both enjoyed cowboy shows like Bonanza and Gunsmoke, as well as sit-coms like Bewitched, and the Munsters.

Eli also took Jacob to the movies. There was a crappy little movie theater over the river in Port Jervis about a thirty minute walk away from their house. On Saturday afternoons, whenever they could afford it, they would stroll over and take a look at whatever was playing. Jacob was most partial to cowboy movies, especially the spaghetti Westerns with Clint Eastwood. Eli had more catholic tastes which ranged from Hitchcock (Psycho, and the Birds) to historical dramas like the Lion in Winter and a Man for all Seasons, to war movies like the Dirty Dozen and the Longest Day, to even musicals like the Sound of Music, and West Side Story. On the way back home, they would discuss the movie of the day with the ferocity of dueling big time newspaper critics. The only movie they ever saw that they agreed on completely was 2001: A Space Odyssey - they agreed that, even though they didn’t understand it in the slightest, it was still, somehow, an awesome movie.

*****

Eli also expounded on girls.

Sooner or later Jake, you’re gonna get a girlfriend. The main thing is not to try to force it. Just let it happen. Or not. You got plenty of time. And remember, all this school boyfriend girlfriend stuff is just practice for the real deal. Getting married. So what you want to do now is just figure out what you like in girls, and what they like in you. Don’t try to be somebody you’re not. You’re okay just as you are. And if the girl doesn’t like you, then that’s her problem, not yours. There is always another one just around the corner.

Now, about getting married. That’s a whole different level. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I think I figured it out. There are like three types of people. It’s a bit like grades in school. At the bottom, there are the “F” people. These are people who get married but it’s a big mistake. Either the guy is bad, or the girl is bad, or they’re both bad. Either way, it’s a disaster. They should never have got married. And they certainly never should have kids. You definitely don’t want to be part of that group. Then, there are the “C” people. These are guys you are okay, you know, average. They are neither good or bad. They get on okay with each other, but there is no passion, no spark. It’s okay for them to have kids, but there are probably not going to be any sparks there either. Unless you want to settle for average, you don’t want to be a part of the “C” group either. Then, last, there is the “A” group. This is where you want to be. These are people who were just meant to be together. They really love each other. Completely. Absolutely. Forever. And if they have kids, it’s the most wonderful thing for everyone. You definitely want to be in this group. The problem is that it’s really hard for these people to find each other, and, unfortunately it doesn’t happen very often. It’s not that there is only one person in the whole world that’s right for you. But then again, there are not that many, and the odds are not good that you will ever find one. But you should definitely try. Don’t give up and settle for a “C”. Keep looking for the “A”. She is out there somewhere.

Jacob digested what he had just heard. After some thought he asked Eli: “So what do you think Mom and Dad’s grade is?”

Eli paused and concentrated. “That’s a good question Jake. I think they’re probably between a C and an A, which I guess would make them a B.”

Jacob considered this revelation carefully. “I think that’s right. But that means there are more than three groups of people, right?

“Yeah, I guess that’s right Jake. Which means you’re probably smarter than me. It also means you’re definitely going to be in the A group when the time comes.”

*****

Eli was a good student and scored a 1560 on his SATs out of a maximum possible score of 1600. He was accepted to the University of Pennsylvania on a full scholarship for the Fall 1970 term. He thought he would most likely major in one of the sciences and go on to medical school, and ultimately become a specialist in infectious diseases. When he was fourteen, he had read a book on Louis Pasteur. It had made a big impression on him, and he had enthusiastically told Jacob about it.

So, this French guy Pasteur was really cool. He lived about a hundred years ago, and he was like the most famous doctor ever. He wasn’t even a real doctor, he was a chemist. He was the first guy to figure out that it was tiny bugs that made beer and wine and milk go bad, and also how you could stop that from happening. That’s why you see the word “pasteurized” on milk cartons even today. And he helped develop vaccines that prevented diseases like anthrax and rabies. Before that, if you got rabies, you were dead. Every time. He was really nice with kids too. In fact, the first person that he cured from rabies was a little kid who had been bitten by a rabid dog. He had some cool sayings too. Like “in the field of observation, chance favors the prepared mind”. Which means that a lot of people see stuff, but only those who really think clearly can truly understand what they’re seeing. He also said that in order to achieve anything worthwhile you needed to work hard. In French it’s “Il faut travailler.” (Eli had started taking French in school.) Apparently, he said those words a lot, and they were the last words he said when he died.

*****

In July of 1970, Eli was drafted to join the seemingly endless Vietnam war effort. He deployed to Vietnam in early 1971 and immediately volunteered as a medic. On November 12, 1971, after having picked up a badly wounded Marine and an even worse wounded South Vietnamese soldier from a rice paddy a hundred kilometers north of Saigon, the Huey MedEvac helicopter they were on began taking heavy machine gun fire from a group of Vietcong fighters about 250 yards away. Less than thirty seconds later, the Huey hit the ground and exploded in a fireball. There were no survivors. Eli’s body was never recovered.

The funeral took place at the small, Agudath Achim cemetery off Orange Street in Port Jervis. It was the only Jewish cemetery for at least twenty-five miles in any direction. The cemetery was affiliated with Temple Beth El on Main Street, the synagogue where both Eli and Jacob had been somewhat perfunctorily bar mitzvahed shortly after their thirteenth birthday. Their parents were Zionists but not religiously observant, and had never maintained any significant ties with the Jewish community. Given that there was no physical body to bury, Eli’s mother had asked the rabbi if it would be okay to place some of Eli’s personal belongings in the plain wooden coffin. The rabbi had initially been tempted to refuse the request on religious grounds. However, as he began to explain his reasonings and concerns, he noted Eli’s father start to move towards him with clearly murderous intent. So he changed his mind and acquiesced.

When the coffin was lowered slowly into the ground, it contained a few grainy family photographs, some of Eli’s favorite records, and his book on Louis Pasteur. It also contained a small envelope inside of which was a brief handwritten note. “You will always be my hero. I miss you now and forever. Love, your brother Jacob.” He watched as his mother and then his father each shoveled a small quantity of dirt on top of the coffin. His father turned to him and offered up the small shovel. Despite the rain, Jacob could clearly see the tears streaming down his father’s face. Through his own tears, he just shook his head slowly from side to side, and turned away.

During the ensuing seven day Jewish shiva period of mourning, only a few visitors came by their house. Both sets of grandparents had died years ago back in Russia. His father had two older brothers both of whom were frail and lived in Florida with their families. His mother had a married sister who lived outside of Vancouver, Canada and said she could not afford the trip to the East Coast. A few congregants from Temple Beth El came by dutifully at the request of the rabbi, as did a couple of their Matamoras neighbors. Jacob was relieved that he did not have to repeatedly reminisce about his dead brother, especially with strangers who were never privileged enough to have known him.

*****

After Eli died, the family unit deteriorated. Jacob’s father spent almost all his waking moments out of the house driving his taxi. His mother became increasingly depressed and withdrawn. She would spend hours just sitting in their small living room staring at a black-and-white portrait of Eli on a small coffee table. Neither of his parents talked about Eli. Ever.

Jacob was now a Junior in high school. Everything seemed to be moving slower, including his thinking. He also seemed to have a constant, dull ache behind his eyes. He began experimenting with pot and sex, but these proved to be all joyless interludes. He was often late for class, and his school grades plummeted. He was accepted into Temple University in Philadelphia, but only because his high school advisor liked him, and she wrote a long letter of recommendation to the admissions officer at Temple explaining the extenuating circumstances behind Jacob’s recent academic decline. The fact that the admissions officer was married to her sister probably helped too.

He attended Temple between 1972 and 1976. The university was only a couple of miles from the center of Philadelphia, but it was located in a bad section of town. In fact, it was a little bit like living in an urban war zone, and he rarely ventured into the city. He knew that his parents had taken out a loan to help pay for tuition and board, and it made him feel bad that he could never really concentrate on his studies. Almost subconsciously, he eventually majored in biology, and sat for the Medical College Admission Test or MCAT. Disappointingly, but unsurprisingly, he did not do well. None of the US-based medical schools that he applied to responded positively. A college advisor told him that if he was truly serious that medicine was his calling, there were medical schools in the Caribbean that were accredited in the United States. Entrance requirements to these schools were less stringent than mainland US medical schools, and it was possible to eventually enter the US medical system via this route. After discussing the financial implications with his father – he would have at least seventy-five thousand dollars of student loan debt by the end of his studies – he decided to apply to a few schools recommended by his advisor. He was accepted to St George’ University School of Medicine in Grenada for the fall term of 1977.

He was 22 years old, single, and had a year to kill. He had saved a few dollars from various summer vacation jobs that he had taken through his years at Temple. He decided he would go backpacking through Europe for a few months. His first stop would be London.

******

Katie

The first time Jacob ever laid eyes on Katie, he was sitting at a small table for two at the Lamb and Flag pub trying to soldier his way through a second pint of room temperature, flat English beer. He had gone there on the advice of another young American who was staying in the same youth hostel. The Lamb and Flag was, and still is, one of those quaint, historic London pubs located in a small alley near Covent Garden. In the 1800s it had actually been called The Bucket of Blood because of the grisly bare-knuckled boxing matches that would regularly take place there.

She was sitting with one other girl at a table for four about twenty feet away. She had her back to the wall and was facing the room. He was sitting at right angles to her, but he only needed to turn his head a fraction to see her clearly. She had auburn hair cut fairly short, an oval face delicately sprinkled with freckles, and, whenever she smiled or laughed, which seemed to be all the time, the most perfect, dazzling white teeth he had ever seen. For some reason, she reminded him of Tinker Bell from the 1953 Peter Pan cartoon. In any event, the real fact of the matter was that he could not take his eyes off her.

He had always been fairly shy, and under normal circumstances, he would certainly never contemplate approaching two girls sitting on their own in a bar. However, these were not normal circumstances. The more he looked at her, the more irresistible she became. If he didn’t even try, and she walked out, he would never be able to forgive himself. He downed the last of his god-awful beer, and walked over to her table.

“Hi, my name is Jacob. Do you mind if I join you?” He knew it was a bit rude, but he was only looking at her and not at all and her companion. She flashed him those perfect white teeth, and gestured with her hand at one of the open seats. Her eyes were blue-green, iridescent, magnetic.

“Sure. I’m Katie, and this is my friend Susan.” Her voice was beguiling, cantillating.

Looking back at it, he couldn’t remember exactly what they talked about. Everything and everyone else just melted away. After leaving the pub, they walked around central London for hours. At some point, Susan left, but he never knew when or where.

She came from Dublin and was visiting London with her girlfriend to celebrate the combination of her nineteenth birthday and being accepted into University College Dublin to study “PP and E” – Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. She was the first person in her family to go to university. She was staying with relatives somewhere near Swiss Cottage in north London.

They were near Big Ben when they heard it toll ten o’clock. It had been dark for some time. Somewhat anxiously, she told him that she would have to leave to get back to her aunt’s house because she would be getting worried. Even more anxiously, he asked if he could see her again the next day. They agreed to meet at noon under Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square.

He arrived at 11:30 am, and tried to look casual as he meandered around. By 12:15 he had convinced himself that she was not coming, and that he was never going to see her again. And then he did. She was running towards him from the National Gallery side of the square. It was early September, but it was still pretty warm, at least by London standards. She was wearing a pale blue miniskirt, a light pink jacket and knee length white boots. She looked absolutely fantastic, Breathlessly, she explained that she was late because of some sort of delay on the Jubilee line. All he knew was that she was there, and all was right with the world.

For the next several hours, they walked along the banks of the Thames, periodically crossing from one side to the other. Effortlessly, they talked about everything – life, politics, art, music, religion, love …

Her father worked for the Guinness brewing Company and, from the sounds of it, appeared to be one of his company’s best customers. Her mom was a housewife who had also raised two older brothers who were now both married with children of their own. The family was Protestant, but largely in name only, with the notable exception that they seemed to despise all Catholics, especially those in the Irish Republican Army. Katie herself had long ago come to the conclusion that misguided religious zealots of all stripes were the true source of most of the world’s problems. Her parents were strong supporters of British control of Ireland, which explained their acquiescence to Katie’s desire to visit London. Katie said that, after nursing school, she would like to visit Africa and work in various countries there for a few years before returning home to start a family.

Her favorite book was “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë. She had also seen the 1939 film version with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon six times. Her second most favorite book, not unexpectedly given her Dublin roots, was “Ulysses”, but only after its multiple layers of genius had been revealed to her via a secondary school English teacher who was a fanatical James Joyce devotee.

Like Jacob, she liked the Beatles. But she preferred the Rolling Stones. She was attracted to their sense of anarchy and subliminal danger.

Her favorite artist was Michelangelo, and she dreamed of one day being able to go to Florence and Rome to see, respectively, the David and the Sistine Chapel. They vigorously agreed with each other that much of modern art was either incomprehensible or just outright stupid.

They also agreed that Adolf Hitler was the most evil man the world had ever known, and that Josef Stalin was a widely underappreciated close second. She found it inconceivable that mankind, throughout its entire history, appeared to have an insatiable desire to annihilate itself.

It started getting dark, and they stopped for a drink and a bite to eat at a small pub near Tower Bridge. By then, Jacob knew without a doubt that he had found his “A girl”.

Later, while walking her back towards the tube station in Leicester Square, he noted that she seemed fidgety. He asked her what was wrong, and she told him that she would be leaving the following day to go back to Dublin. It took a few minutes for her statement to sink in. He began to feel nauseated and lightheaded. By now they had reached Leicester Square. He spotted an empty bench, and they sat down. Eventually, he spoke.

“Why don’t you come with me and tour around England for a while? University doesn’t start for at least three weeks.”

“I don’t think I can.” She was looking down at the ground, concentrating.

“Please?” It came out weakly, even pathetically. But he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

She was silent for what seemed like an eternity. Then she brought her face right up next to his. “I need to think about this some more, but I might be able to get Susan to agree to tell my parents and my aunt that the two of us have decided to extend our stay and do some sightseeing on our own. Susan is actually twenty-one, and my parents like her and trust her. Also, it turns out that she met a really nice guy after she left us yesterday evening, so this would actually be good for her too. I don’t feel totally right about lying to my family, but I really like you and I don’t want to stop seeing you.”

Then she put her hands on either side of his face and kissed him. Her lips were velvety. They embraced just long enough to drink each other in.

She pulled her head back a few inches and looked at him intently with her iridescent blue-green eyes. Her hands were still on the sides of his face. “If it works out, I’ll meet you at this exact spot tomorrow at 10 am. If not…” Her voice trailed off. Quickly, she got up from the bench and, without looking back, walked rapidly towards the tube station entrance.

He was sitting on the bench in Leicester Square at nine the next morning. She arrived thirty minutes later. She was carrying a small, brown suitcase. And she was smiling…

*****

They decided they would visit the Lake District. After a brief visit to a department store to obtain a backpack and walking shoes for Katie, they boarded a train for Manchester, where they caught a second train to Windemere. By the time they arrived, it was almost 9 pm and they were famished and exhausted. They found a pub close to the train station that still had some stale cheese sandwiches which they devoured with great relish. The pub also functioned as a cheap hotel. After an awkward moment or two, they mutually decided it would be best if they slept in separate rooms. Early the next day, after a surprisingly decent breakfast, they set off by foot to the northeast, toward Kentmere and Penrith,

After several hours of walking through stunningly beautiful countryside, they realized that they would soon need to find someplace to serve as a base of operations and a place to sleep. Somewhere between Kentmere and Sadgill, they passed a small stone cottage just as an elderly woman on a bicycle was alighting near the front door, Given that she looked kindly and was clearly a local, they asked her for a recommendation for a place to stay. She looked them up and down keenly while she gave them the names of several nearby bed and breakfasts. Seeming satisfied with her observations, she leaned in towards them and, in a hushed, conspiratorial tone, informed them that she actually had a storage shed in the back of her house that she was in the middle of converting into a room where her son and daughter-in-law could stay when they visited her. She had recently installed electricity and a small shower, but the toilet facilities were located in an outhouse at the bottom of the back garden. There was no heating, but she said she could provide them with extra blankets if needed. And, including breakfast, it would cost them no more than half of what they would pay in any of the other establishments she had mentioned. At this point, Jacob strongly considered giving the woman a big hug.

They followed her down a narrow passage between the side of her house and an adjoining hedge. As advertised, their new accommodations consisted of a small wooden shed, but it looked sturdy enough. It had a small door and a single, tiny window facing the back door of the old lady’s house which was about thirty feet away. Inside, the space was dominated by a comfortable looking fourposter bed that Jacob felt sure must have been assembled on site given the relative size of the bed and the doorway. In one corner, there was a small curtained shower with an adjacent Lilliputian sink. Most of the floorboard area was covered by a variety of aging but spotless rugs. It was perfect.

That evening, they dined in a charming local pub that their new landlady had recommended. It was dark when they got back to the old lady’s house. From the street outside, they could see her watching television sitting next to a small gas fire in her front room. Silently, they opened the front gate and made their way along the side of the house to the back. As usual, they had been chattering incessantly the whole time. But they were both quiet now. He could feel himself breathing quickly and shallowly, and he felt his pulse pounding in his temples.

He did not switch the light on as they entered. They sat down on the side of the bed, and just held hands for several minutes without speaking. Then he turned to her and said: “Look, we don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to.” He wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or to himself.

She did not answer right away.

“I do want to. This just feels so right, I don’t want to miss a moment of it, not any of it. I want to take it all in, every sound, every sight, every smell, every feeling.”

He reached over and took her in his arms and kissed her. This time, it was long, moist, hungry. Their clothes came off in a rush, and they moved under the covers as one. He could feel the dampness between her legs against his thigh. She could feel his erection against her waist.

“I realize that this might totally kill the moment, but do you want me to use a condom?” He was embarrassed at how ungainly and inexperienced he sounded. To his relief, all she did was throw her head back and laugh softly.

“I am on the pill you sweet moron. And like I said, I want to take it all in.”

Their first bout of lovemaking was intense, primal, and swift. After that, they were able to relax, and take the proper time to fully discover each other. When they awoke the following morning to the sound of birds chirping in the nearby hedge, they looked over at each other and just started giggling.

They made love several times a day, every day, including one memorable occasion after lunch outside under some trees, somewhat perilously close to a group of hikers. After that particular tryst, Katie had picked some wildflowers that were growing nearby. She said she wanted to recreate the scene from DH Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover where the protagonist places flowers in her lover’s pubic hair. She thought that was very sexy. He told her he thought it sounded faintly ridiculous.

As usual however, she proved to be right….

She had managed to convince her parents to grant her a one-week extension, but no more.

They spent their last night together in their little shed as if they were the last two people on earth.

*****

He decided that he would accompany her back to Dublin. They took a train from Windemere to Liverpool, and then boarded the ferry to Dublin. Before parting, he took down her address and told her he would write to her as soon as he found an appropriate place to stay. She was due to start classes in ten days, and would be spending that entire time at home with her family. He found a one room flat to let near the Belfield campus of University College Dublin, a couple of miles south of the city center. It was in a semi-detached house on a quiet residential street. Many of the surrounding houses appeared to have rooms or flats that specifically targeted students from UCD. Other than his American accent, he blended right in.

After classes on weekdays, she would walk over to his flat, and they would make love. Then, they would go out for a quick bite to eat at either a local pub or a fish and chips shop, after which she would go home to her parents’ house on the west side of the city near Phoenix Park. At the weekends, they would spend most of the day together, visiting the city center and, of course, making love.

After several weeks, they started talking seriously about their future together. They examined their logistic challenges carefully. He was due to start medical school the following fall in Grenada, about four thousand miles away from Dublin. He would be there for two years after which he would most likely spend the final two years of medical school in a training program somewhere in the New York City area. Her degree would take three years, which meant that she should be finishing her studies at around the same time he made his transition from Grenada to New York. By then she would be twenty-two years old, and clearly able to make life decisions independently. Either she would move to New York or he would come over to Ireland. Either way, they would be together.

Their conversations started out hopeful, optimistic, confident. Three years wasn’t that long after all, and they would be able to see each other periodically, particularly during the long summer holidays.

They started probing more carefully. Three years was actually pretty long. And, if she came to New York, what would she be able to do with her Irish degree, if anything? Would she need to take other courses, and if so, how would they afford it? If he came over to Dublin, would he be able to find work right away as a physician or, again, would he need further training? After all, in the United States, he would almost certainly be required to do a residency in some medical specialty before being able to successfully start a practice. And, assuming she were with him in New York during residency, how would they cope given the well-known physical and financial strains.

Furthermore, her parents had somehow become aware that their baby girl was seeing someone fairly seriously. Not only that, but that someone was American. (While walking around town together, they had actually been seen and overheard by one of Katie’s mother’s friends.) Katie’s parents had been teenagers during World War II and vividly remembered the jaundiced opinion of many British citizens regarding American soldiers – “oversexed, overpaid, and over here.” Life in her parents’ house was becoming difficult.

Their conversations gradually became less hopeful, less optimistic, less confident.

Eventually, inexorably, they agreed that it just would not work.

His money was running low, and he needed to get back to the United States. On a Saturday in early December, she accompanied him to the ferry station for the trip back to Liverpool.

“You are the most wonderful person I have ever met, and I am pretty sure I will never meet anyone better. I will always love you.”

“I feel the same about you. You are such a great guy. You’re going to make someone very happy one day. I’m just sorry it wasn’t me.”

They kissed tenderly and tearfully one final time, and then he turned and walked toward the ferry.

*****

For the next ten months, they wrote to each other almost every day. After he started medical school and the academic burdens of his basic science classes began to impose themselves in earnest, the letters decreased in frequency to once a week, but they remained ardent and passionate.

In the middle of his second semester in Grenada, he met a girl. Her name was Diana and she sat next to him in several of his classes. She came from a small town in Indiana, and like him, had been unable to secure a spot in an American medical school. She seemed pleasant enough, and was not unattractive, so when she asked him to go out to dinner with some friends that weekend he naturally said yes.

When he arrived at the restaurant, he was somewhat surprised to find her sitting alone at a table for two. She told him that the others had canceled at the last minute for some unknown reason. There was an uncorked bottle of red wine and an almost empty wine glass on the table in front of her. She had a mildly predatory look in her eye. He felt uncomfortable but sat down mainly out of politeness. Toward the end of the main course, she reached over and touched his right hand as it was resting on the table palm down. She asked him if he would like to take her home and spend the night with her. Gently but firmly, he moved his hand away, and told her that he had a girlfriend in Ireland. She looked at him quizzically, cocked her head, and said: “Then she’ll never know, will she?”

“No, but I would.”

Then he got up, thanked her for dinner, left more than enough money to cover the bill, and walked out.

*****

Just before the start of his first year final exams, he was summoned to the Dean’s office. They had just been informed by telegram that Jacob’s father had died. They gave him a week’s leave to go home.

His mother greeted him on the porch. She seemed hollowed out. She told him that his father had been found dead in his taxi parked near the center of the neighboring town of Milford. He must have been dead for some time because they had difficulty getting him out of the car. The coroner said it was almost certainly a heart attack, and that he had died suddenly. In a futile and misguided attempt at empathy, the local sheriff had added : “Well, at least he didn’t drop dead while he was driving and kill anybody else.” His father had celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday two months earlier. He would never see either of his sons graduate from medical school.

After Eli’s death, his parents had put a deposit on an adjacent double plot for themselves. Jacob had never gone back to the cemetery after the funeral. He preferred to remember Eli as he was when he was alive rather than in a wooden box six feet underground, or in a nameless rice paddy in Vietnam.

After his father’s coffin was lowered and both his mother and he had emptied their ritual shovelful of dirt on top of the casket, he placed a small stone on his brother’s tombstone. He never fully understood why Jews did that, but it made him feel better.

Again, shiva was a desultory affair with minimal visitors. His mother told him that she wanted to remain in the house. It was fully paid for, her daily living expenses were minimal, and between death benefits, social security and whatever her husband’s life insurance payout would be, she would be able to manage.

When he kissed her goodbye before getting on the bus to New York, he could not help noticing how old and frail she now seemed.

*****

With difficulty, he was able to finance a brief trip to visit Katie in Dublin during the summer vacation between his first and second year. By then, they had not seen each other for almost two years. Katie was living in a small flat in south Dublin with three other female university students, but was staying with her parents over the summer holidays. She had given him the telephone number, and he called her from Gatwick Airport in London as soon as he had retrieved his suitcase and cleared customs. Katie’s father answered the phone, and there was an awkward pause after Jacob asked to speak to her, and his East Coast American accent had sunk in.

They agreed to meet at noon the next day at the Brazen Head pub off the River Liffey in the center of town. Katie told him that it was the oldest pub in Dublin, and had been frequented by her perpetual literary hero and Dublin son, James Joyce.

As usual, he arrived early. Thankfully, it was not raining, and he positioned himself on a narrow bench in the pub’s courtyard in such a way that he would not fail to see her arrive. He was apprehensive at how she might react to him in the flesh after all this time.

She walked through the alleyway into the courtyard just before noon. She was wearing bellbottomed blue jeans, a white turtleneck sweater, and platform shoes. Her hair was longer and somewhat darker than he remembered. She looked a little older, but then again, so did he. More to the point, she was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

She spotted him, and flashed her trademark toothy smile. He knew then, without a shadow of a doubt, that he could never live without her.

Later that day, while walking around Dublin holding hands, he told her that he loved her, and wanted to marry her. She stopped and turned to him.

“I know you believe what you’re saying. And I still love you too. You still have one more year in Grenada, and I have one more year before I graduate and get my degree. A lot can happen in one year. If you still feel the same about me then, and I feel the same about you, then we can be together forever. If not…” She didn’t finish the sentence.

He only had enough funds to stay in Dublin for one night. They decided that it would be best if they didn’t spend it together.

*****

About one year later, on the evening of his last day in Grenada, he called her long-distance. This time, she answered the phone directly.

“I will be there in about a week. I still want to marry you. And I want you to come to live with me in New York. And this time, I’m not taking no for an answer.”

There was a long pause. Then he heard her giggle.

“I guess I’ll have to buy a dress then.”

She is so cool. Eli, I have definitely found my A girl.

They did not get married the following week. In fact, they had to wait several months because of Ireland’s marriage notification policy requiring three months minimum advance notice to the Registrar. By then, Jacob had actually started his first clinical rotation in internal medicine at Metropolitan Hospital in Spanish Harlem in New York. He was only able to obtain a week’s leave. They settled on the specific date of Thursday August 23rd . 1979.

When Katie’s parents found out that she was marrying an American Jew and moving to New York, it rapidly became clear to all that they were significantly less liberal than they had purported or believed themselves to be. Put more succinctly, they basically lost their minds.

A church wedding was out of the question. Despite his lack of Jewish religious conviction, Jacob was not totally comfortable with the thought of a Christian wedding. Moreover, the local vicar actively tried to dissuade Katie from marrying a “non-Christian”. According to her, the poor man had almost choked to death when he uttered those words. Katie was quite happy with the idea of a purely civil ceremony. With the help of some well-connected friends of friends, she was able to secure the magnificent Georgian Dublin City Hall in the center of town for the event.

On the day, he wore a rented pale gray morning suit and tails. Katie wore a tightly waisted white wedding dress delicately fringed with lace accents. She looked radiant.

Katie’s parents attended the ceremony but stayed toward the back and left early. Katie, who had been unable to stop laughing during most of the proceedings, did not notice them leave.

Jacob’s mother did not attend. She told him that she was deathly afraid of flying. In fact, since her husband’s death, she had become progressively agoraphobic and rarely ventured out of the house. She did however give Jacob a small engraved wooden box with strict instructions that he deliver it to Katie on their wedding day. The box contained a small emerald brooch that her own mother had given her when she had got married, along with a short handwritten note: “Dearest Katie, I am so happy that you will now be part of Jacob’s life. He has told me all about you, and I know that you will both love each other forever. I am sorry I could not be there with you on your day of joy. Hopefully, I will get to meet you soon. Love, Mom.”

Since they could not afford the typical wedding reception venue, they had settled on having a small party at Katie’s flat. Katie’s two older brothers, Robert and John, helped Jacob stock up on beer and liquor. Katie and Jacob spent most of the day before the wedding making sandwiches and buying snacks.

It was, hands down, the best wedding party he ever attended.

They spent almost the entirety of their three-day honeymoon in Katie’s bedroom.

*****

It took several more months for Katie to organize the necessary paperwork and formalities required for her to move to the United States and eventually become an American citizen. For the next two years, in addition to Metropolitan Hospital, Jacob had clinical rotations at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx. Earlier, he had found a small, only moderately roach infested studio apartment on the fifth floor of a walk-up building on West 94th Street, a short walk from the subway station on 96th. Shortly after arriving in the United States, Katie managed to get a job at the Coliseum bookstore near Columbus Avenue. The money was not plentiful, but it allowed them to scrape by, barely. At least she was surrounded by books which she could read for free. And they had each other.

In 1981, Jacob received his medical diploma and participated in the National Residency Matching Program. He matched to the internal medicine program at St. Luke’s hospital, a Columbia University Medical School affiliate located on West 114th Street, on the border zone between northern Manhattan and Harlem, adjacent to the undergraduate campus of Columbia University. They moved into a studio apartment in subsidized housing on 10th Avenue, conveniently located across the street from the hospital.

They discussed the possibility of starting a family. Jacob’s work hours were likely to be grueling for at least the next several years. Despite the presence of two paychecks, their overall income was still paltry. They decided to defer. Also, New York City had a lot to offer a young healthy couple in the 1980s, even one with limited means.

Jacob completed his internal medicine residency in 1984 and started a two-year fellowship in cardiology at the same hospital. In 1986, he accepted a position as a junior staff cardiologist St. Luke’s.

Throughout, they made sure to take vacations whenever they could spare the time and the money. Sometimes they would just rent a car and drive to New England for a couple of days’ hiking. They called these brief sojourns their “daycations”. On longer jaunts, they would visit Mexico or the Caribbean, including one final farewell trip to Grenada, Jacob’s alma mater.

If they ever had more than a week off together, they would travel to Europe, specifically Italy, France, and, of course, Ireland to see Katie’s friends and relatives. After the first couple of years, her parents had resigned themselves to the fact that she was unlikely to leave Jacob and move back to Dublin. In fact, Katie’s Dad had actually grown quite fond of Jacob. During their Dublin visits, Katie’s Dad would regularly parade him around the local pub introducing him to one and all as “my son in law, the doctor”.

During one of those Irish trips, they made a brief detour back to the Lake District. They managed to find the old lady’s house again, but were told that she had died several years earlier. The house was now inhabited by a young family and several dogs. They did not inquire about the wooden shed in the back garden. They also revisited the spot where they had made love outdoors. It was raining steadily, and there were numerous passersby at the time, so they decided not to repeat their prior risqué behavior. Katie did pick some wildflowers however, and they were able to successfully re-create their Lady Chatterley’s Lover game later that night in their hotel. It was still a very good game.

In 1987, having by then paid off a large chunk of his onerous student debt, and with the help of some creative accounting, they purchased a one bedroom apartment in a modern condominium building in an iffy but up-and-coming part of Hell’s Kitchen.

In 1990, Jacob noted that his mom, who they visited on a regular basis, was becoming increasingly scattered and forgetful. Despite his entreaties, she insisted that she wanted to remain living on her own as long as possible.

Jacob’s academic career was progressing nicely, and money was no longer tight. In 1992 Katie decided that she wanted to go back to school and ultimately obtain a Masters degree in Business Administration. Fordham University agreed to grant her the equivalent of two years worth of academic credit for her prior work at University College Dublin, and, with the aid of yet another student loan, she began taking courses in Fordham that fall.

In late 1994, just before starting her MBA at New York University, Katie found out that she was pregnant.

That evening, they went out for a walk.

“Jake, I’ve never been so happy in my life as I have with you the past fifteen years. You’re like this smooth, silky, sexy glove that fits me perfectly, and that I want to wear all the time. But, for some time now, I felt that something is missing. I thought I could fill that hole with a new career. I was wrong. This is what I was waiting for. I want to be a mom.”

Jacob hugged her and gave her a soft kiss. “I love you sweetheart. You’re going to be the greatest mom ever.”

Even as he said this, he felt a pang of anxiety. When the baby would be born, he would be 41 years old. More significantly, Katie would be 37.

*****

Aurora

Since the risk of maternofetal complications increases significantly after age thirty-five, Katie’s pregnancy was technically high-risk. Through one of Jacobs contacts in the hospital they were given the name of an expert high-risk obstetrician at Mount Sinai hospital on the upper Eastside. They arranged for a consultation and diagnostic ultrasound at week nineteen.

Dr. Taylor, an austere, patrician with a bedside manner that was brusque to the point of being brutish, performed the ultrasound examination himself. He did not speak or emote during the entire twenty minute procedure. Grudgingly, he had allowed Jacob to remain in the examination room after finding out that he was a physician.

“The ultrasound window is not ideal, but I believe there may be some nuchal thickening.” He turned away from Katie and faced Jacob. “As you probably know, this raises the possibility of Down syndrome.” There was a vague but distinct patronizing tone in his voice. “I recommend an amniocentesis and karyotyping as soon as possible in order to confirm the diagnosis. If confirmed, I would suggest termination.”

Jacob had been reading up on high-risk pregnancy for some time, and had prepared himself for this sort of possibility. Or so he thought. He felt lightheaded.

“Dr. Taylor, I am the mother of this baby, and I would appreciate it if you could address me directly when discussing your findings and recommendations. I would like a few minutes to discuss this issue alone with my husband.” Katie’s voice was glacial, but her eyes were on fire. Jacob would not have been surprised if Dr. Taylor had suddenly burst into flames. The object of her wrath turned back towards her, eyes widened. He began some sort of apology, but she waved him off dismissively. Wordlessly, he got up and left the room.

“Condescending little shit. What is it with these guys and their God complex?”

Jacob’s literature review had made him quite familiar with Down syndrome. It is the most common genetic abnormality in live born births, and was named after an English physician, John Langdon Down, who was the first to publish a description of a patient in 1866. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the risk of having a child with Down syndrome increases from about one in 1,250 for a woman in her 20s to about one in 100 at age 40. In the vast majority of cases, the underlying genetic abnormality is due to trisomy 21, where the fetus acquires an extra chromosome due to meiotic nondisjunction in the mother at the time of sex cell formation.

Children with Down syndrome have characteristic physical features including upsloping eyelids (also known as upsloping palpebral fissures); a characteristic fold of skin on the inner corner of the eye (so-called epicanthic folds); a short, flat head (also known as brachycephaly); a short neck; a flat nasal bridge; a transverse palmar crease; short, broad hands; and an in-curved fifth finger with a hypoplastic middle phalanx.

In addition, children with Down syndrome nearly all have some degree of cognitive impairment, as well as a myriad of potential associated conditions and complications in multiple organ systems. These include: multiple types of congenital heart disease; various gastrointestinal abnormalities including duodenal atresia, Hirschprung’s disease, and Celiac disease; pulmonary abnormalities including asthma and sleep apnea; musculoskeletal abnormalities including hypotonia, hyper flexible joints, and atlanto-axial instability; endocrine disorders including thyroid disease and diabetes; various ophthalmic disorders; recurrent otitis media and various types of hearing loss; increased risk of certain types of leukemia; and various skin disorders.

Sometimes being a doctor gave you access to too much information. Jacob had decided not to share any of this knowledge with Katie in the past. He began to ponder if he should start now.

“I knew that Down syndrome was a possibility given my age. I looked into it. And I know the problems that we might be facing. But I also know that some of these children can lead happy and productive lives if given a chance, and the right sort of parents. And I think we are the right sort of parents.

“I also read about amniocentesis. Depending on the source of the data, the risk of fetal death directly as a result of the amniocentesis procedure itself is up to 1%. If we were going to consider termination, that might be an acceptable risk. But if we are not going to consider termination, and I think we should not, then why would we subject our baby to a potential risk of death. Or put another way, if we are going to keep the baby anyways, whether or not he or she has Down syndrome, then how would knowing whether or not they have it change what we do? Again, we would just be subjecting our baby to risk without any benefit.”

This woman is amazing.

Dr. Taylor came back into the room about fifteen minutes later.

“I did not have a chance to tell you before. The fetus is a girl.”

Jacob and Katie took a moment to internalize this new information.

“We have discussed the issue in detail, and we have decided not to proceed with amniocentesis.”

“Okay, but I have to tell you Mrs. Levine that I think you’re making a mistake. Amniocentesis is extremely safe if performed by experienced physicians. And, in my opinion, if the child is proven to have Down syndrome, termination is the most appropriate option for all concerned. “

“With respect Dr. Taylor, we are not asking for your opinion.”

Fuck you, and the horse that you rode in on.

*****

They decided to name the baby Aurora, and she was born on an appropriately luminous morning in June. The birthing was remarkably unremarkable. Dr. Taylor was not in attendance.

One of the nurses placed Aurora on Katie’s belly. Jacob and Katie thought she was the most exquisite thing they had ever seen. She had her mother’s eye coloring and her father’s unruly hair. They could also see that Aurora most likely did have Down syndrome. Their impression was confirmed by the perinatologist, with the caveat that they would have to await the results of karyotyping for a final diagnosis. He added that he thought he could hear a heart murmur, and that he had asked for a pediatric cardiology consultation.

The pediatric cardiologist verified the presence of a murmur, and said that his clinical impression was that Aurora had some form of ventricular septal defect. He would need to do further testing in order to determine what the exact nature of the defect was, and whether other cardiac abnormalities were present. This would in turn guide future decisions regarding treatment. Jacob knew that there were several types of ventricular septal defect that could occur fairly commonly in children with Down syndrome, ranging from small defects that would close spontaneously to large defects that required urgent, life-saving surgery. The presence of other concomitant congenital cardiac abnormalities was, unfortunately, a real possibility. Aurora did not appear short of breath or cyanotic which, thankfully, allowed for a more deliberate approach.

Over the next couple of days, Aurora underwent testing that confirmed the presence of an atrioventricular endocardial cushion defect, a hole that essentially allowed inappropriate mixing of blood between all four chambers of the heart. She would require surgery to correct the defect with a synthetic patch sometime between three and six months of age. The good news was that the surgery, if successful, would likely be curative. Furthermore, there did not appear to be any other associated cardiac lesions. Unsurprisingly, karyotyping confirmed trisomy 21.

It could have been better, but it also could have been much worse.

Aurora underwent cardiac surgery at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center shortly after she turned four months old. The surgeon they had chosen, Dr. Borenstein, had a vast experience in pediatric congenital heart disease, and, unlike an unfortunately large percentage of his ilk, was a true prince of a man. He was one of those rare physicians who was able to effortlessly exude a perfectly balanced combination of competence, optimism and congeniality without succumbing to arrogance or over familiarity.

That all said, Jacob and Katie were terrified. So it was with considerable relief that they noticed that Dr. Borenstein was smiling when he approached them in the waiting room. He told them that he had been able to successfully close the atrioventricular defect with a single pericardial patch graft, and that, other than some transient heart rhythm disturbances, Aurora had done just fine. He confirmed that although she would require lifelong regular cardiac follow-up, she was highly unlikely to require any follow-up cardiac surgical procedures in the future. After thanking him profusely, Katie unapologetically hugged him so tightly that she almost lifted him off his feet.

When Aurora was around three months of age, Katie and Jacob noticed that she did not seem to be responding significantly to ambient sound. An audiological evaluation revealed serous otitis media, another common complication in children with Down syndrome. After the placement of bilateral tympanostomy tubes a few weeks later, Aurora’s response to sound normalized.

Jacob and Katie developed a complex schedule to help them navigate the bewildering array of regular medical subspecialty consultations that Aurora required. In addition to her periodic cardiac and ENT followups, she required regular visits to an ophthalmologist, a pediatric dentist, and a developmental disabilities pediatrician who routinely screened her for the wide variety of medical issues known to be associated with Down syndrome. Furthermore, there were regular visits for occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech therapy, all organized through Columbia. Katie rapidly became Aurora’s most enthusiastic and vocal advocate.

*****

Another couple who lived on the same floor of their apartment building just three doors away had a young boy named Sean who was almost exactly Aurora’s age. This allowed Jacob and Katie to compare, sometimes in excruciating detail, the developmental differences between children with Down syndrome and their so-called normal counterparts. In general, Aurora seemed to be about 6 to 12 months behind Sean in most developmental milestones. Just before Aurora’s second birthday, she began saying “mama” and “dada”. Jacob and Katie were overjoyed. However, shortly thereafter, they noted that the gap between Aurora and Sean appeared to be widening. On the other hand, Aurora seemed to be an unusually content toddler who would often wake up laughing.

After Aurora turned four, Katie and Jacob decided to enroll her in Pre-K. They contacted the New York City Board of Education. After a series of interviews and evaluations, some performed by individuals who were almost certainly Nazi prison guards in a prior life, Aurora was deemed eligible for “early intervention” and enrollment in a local Pre-K program with “support”. In the fall of 1999, or Aurora started Pre-K at PS 212 on West 48th Street, a short walk away from their apartment.

With the help of Katie’s incessant and unwavering extracurricular coaching efforts and stimulation, Aurora progressed slowly but steadily through Pre-K, kindergarten, and first grade. They never ceased to be amazed at the effect that Aurora seemed to impart on the majority of those she met, both adult and child. Within minutes, they would be smiling. There were, of course, exceptions. Some children would tease her and make fun of her looks and relatively slow speech. But they were children. Less explainable was the behavior of certain adults, especially those with other young children of their own.

Some of these behaved as if Aurora had a highly contagious disease.

She has Down syndrome, not Ebola, you fricking idiot!

Some would turn to Katie and /or Jacob and, and in an overly solicitous, almost sermonic tone, say some variant of: “I understand that they are usually very nice, not like the others.”

She’s not a piece of fruit, you moron. And she happens to be standing right in front of you, and can hear and understand every word you’re saying!

Others would come up close and try to speak directly to Aurora, but in an inappropriately loud voice.

Not everyone with cognitive impairment is deaf, you putz!

And others would just stand and stare, often with mouth agape. One notable instance of this occurred in the elevator of their apartment building when Aurora was six. After a couple of minutes, Aurora turned to the gawker and said:” It’s not nice to stare. Maybe you want a picture.” Then she threw back her head, and laughed raucously at her own joke.

Out of the mouths of babes…

*****

September 11, 2001 was one of those typical, perfect, crystal-clear, sunny late summer days in New York City. Aurora had just recently started first grade, and Katie had dropped her off at school at around 8:15 am. After picking up some miscellaneous shopping items, Katie went back home and turned on one of the local news channels on TV while she busied herself with some housework.

At 8:46 am, a small group of Al Qaeda terrorists crashed American Airlines Flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Center just above the 93rd floor. The local news station picked up on it immediately, but seemed to believe that it was most likely a small plane that had accidentally veered off course and crashed into the building. At 9:03 am, a second plane, United Airlines flight 175, crashed into the South Tower just above the 75th floor. This time the crash was caught on camera and there was no mistaking the fact that it was an airliner that had hit the building. From the window of her small kitchen on the thirtieth floor of her apartment building Katie had a reasonably clear view of the Twin Towers about four miles away. She could see smoky, jagged defects in the upper floors of both buildings. At 9:31 am, the TV news anchors reported that President Bush had stated that this was “an apparent terrorist attack”.

Katie rushed over to pick Aurora up from school. On her way there, at 9:37 am, a third plane, American Airlines flight 77, crashed into the Pentagon.

There was absolute pandemonium at the school with multiple parents rushing headlong into classrooms to grab their children. Katie located Aurora, signed a makeshift release form, and hurried back home to call Jacob. Before they got there, at 9:59 am, the huge South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed on itself killing almost everyone inside.

When they got back to the apartment, the TV informed them that United Airlines flight 93 had crashed into a field in Pennsylvania following a heroic but failed attempt by passengers to wrest control of the plane from its hijackers. There were no survivors.

At 10:28 am, as she stood in her kitchen hugging Aurora tightly, Katie saw the North Tower collapse in real time.

Later that week, Katie and Jacob decided to move out of New York City.

*****

It took almost six months to get everything organized. They did not want to sever all ties with New York, meaning that they needed to move somewhere that was no more than a two hour drive away. Long Island was expensive and burdened with horrendous traffic. Connecticut was marginally better in terms of travel but similarly pricey. That left New Jersey and Pennsylvania. They opted for the latter given the relatively higher taxes and real estate prices in New Jersey. This would also allow them to be closer to Jacob’s mom who was by now struggling to remain living independently.

After several field trips, they found a charming, newly constructed three-bedroom house in a quiet residential development between Matamoras and Milford. In addition to the three upstairs bedrooms, the house had a large kitchen, separate living and dining room areas, a screened in all-weather porch, a full but unfinished basement, and a two-car garage. It also sat on almost one and a half acres of woodland, with the nearest neighbor being over one hundred yards away. The house had been sitting on the market for almost a year and was priced to sell. They had already paid down most of their outstanding mortgage on their New York apartment and decided they would keep it as a pied-a-terre for when they would visit the city.

Jacob agonized over what to do about work. By now, he had been a clinical and academic cardiologist for over fifteen years. With considerable effort, he had built up a thriving practice and a solid professional reputation. The nature of cardiovascular medicine was such that many of his patients were chronically seriously ill. Others would become acutely ill, often at inconvenient times. It would be unreasonable, if not unethical, to be taking care of such patients if you lived several hours away. In addition, a daily commute of at least four hours on top of a typical ten to twelve hour workday would likely soon prove intolerable.

Trying to build up a new practice and new clinical relationships from scratch in brand-new and unfamiliar location was at best a daunting prospect. At the age of forty-eight, it was unthinkable.

With great reluctance, he decided to give up his practice and try to find work with either a drug company or an insurance company, ideally in New Jersey somewhere between New York City and Pennsylvania. His gross revenue would be less, but he would not have any significant overhead expenses, so he would hopefully net out reasonably neutral. After several months of job searching and interviews, he accepted a position as medical director at the Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey headquarters in Newark. He was fairly confident that it would prove to be soul destroying work, but the overall hours and commute were acceptable and, when he was home, he would have no ongoing patient responsibilities.

It took almost two months to meet personally with each of his patients face-to-face. He told him that he was leaving direct clinical medicine in order to spend more time with his family in the aftermath of 9/11. Which was true. He was genuinely thrilled about the prospect of being able to spend a lot more time with Aurora. But he had been with some of these people for over a decade, often through pretty harrowing times. They were like family.

Some patients became upset at the thought of having to find another doctor. Some even cried. But they all wished him well. All told, it was one of the hardest things he had ever done.

They moved into their new home in May 2002.

*****

Aurora needed to go to school. The available choices had not significantly changed since Jacob’s childhood, so they decided on the Delaware Valley Elementary School in Matamoras, the same school Jacob and Eli had attended as children. After an unavoidable, and predictably somewhat miserable, evaluation, an Individualized Educational Program (IEP) was developed. The IEP proposed that Aurora receive specialized support services, with the goal of her being mainstreamed as much as possible. Since Aurora had missed a non-trivial portion of her first grade curriculum in New York as a result of their move, it was mutually agreed that she would be best served if she were to repeat first grade.

Realizing that transitioning to a new environment might prove difficult for Aurora, as a treat Jacob and Katie decided to take her to Disney World for several days in July prior to her starting school the following month. They found a relatively cheap hotel in Kissimmee, only a thirty minute drive from the park. The hotel was modern and clean, offered an excellent breakfast buffet, and their room even had a decent size balcony.

Other than the heat was unbearable during the long days in the park, it was terrific fun. More importantly, Aurora loved it. And the Disney staff were delightful. They took special care of her, including moving her to the front of long lines on several occasions, all without a hint of condescension or misplaced pity. Katie and Jacob had only one issue with the whole experience. They both agreed that they never wanted to go on the “It’s a Small World” ride and hear that interminable tune again. Ever.

In the evening, the three of them would sit on the balcony watching the sun set slowly, and fool around, asking each other to “Kiss-im-mee”.

*****

Aurora did fairly well in Elementary School. The teachers were generally helpful and kind, and the other children treated her reasonably well. She even made a couple of friends.

In third grade, shortly after the Christmas/New Year vacation break, Aurora’s homeroom teacher called Katie at home to say that she had noticed that Aurora seemed unusually fatigued in class. She wondered if she was having any sleeping difficulties. That evening, when Jacob returned home from work, he noted a bruise on Aurora’s left forearm. He asked her if she had fallen or somehow hit herself. She denied either vigorously. After Katie related the teacher’s concern about fatigue, a sudden, but ominously recognizable, diagnostic alarm bell went off in Jacob’s head. Fatigue and easy bruising might indicate the combination of anemia and thrombocytopenia, low platelets. And that in turn could indicate a significant underlying hematologic problem, like leukemia, yet another well-recognized complication of Down Syndrome.

The tests came back later that week – Aurora had acute lymphocytic leukemia, known best in the medical world by its acronym, ALL.

*****

Aurora began treatment for ALL in late January 2005 as a patient on the Pediatric Hematology and Oncology service of Mount Sinai hospital, the same hospital she was born in eight years earlier. Jacob and Katie were informed that, unfortunately, the combination of ALL and Down syndrome is associated with a greater risk of treatment related complications, including mortality, a higher risk of relapse, and lower overall survival rate.

Treatment would occur in three separate stages: induction; consolidation; and maintenance. Induction, which usually lasted about a month, had as its primary goal the achievement of an initial complete remission as defined by the eradication of all detectable abnormal ALL cells from the bone marrow, and the restoration of normal blood cell formation. Because the doses of chemotherapy used in the induction phase were high, all patients, but especially those with Down syndrome, were at their highest risk of severe treatment associated complications during this phase. These complications included: tumor lysis syndrome, a severe metabolic derangement due to rapid killing of tumor cells with subsequent release of their contents; bleeding; clotting; serious infection; and death. Because of the high risk of relapse of ALL in the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord), preventive therapy for this would also be started during the induction phase, and would continue periodically thereafter. Despite the absence of detectable ALL cells after ostensibly successful induction, it was well recognized that small numbers of undetectable leukemic cells still remained in the bone marrow. Consequently, patients with ALL needed to undergo a consolidation phase of treatment in an effort to eradicate these cells. This phase typically took between four to eight months. Finally, to reduce the risk of late relapse, patients with ALL needed to undergo a prolonged maintenance therapy phase which could last up to forty-two months. The entire treatment regimen would therefore last about four years.

This was seriously scary shit…

The pediatric hematology team recommended the use of a slightly lower intensity chemotherapeutic regimen during induction because of the higher incidence of treatment related complications in patients with Down syndrome. After some initial discussion, Jacob and Katie decided to surrender most of the major medical decisions to the team. Unless they would be faced with a situation where there was clearly no recommended or preferred course of action, they would defer to those who had the greater knowledge and experience.

The team also recommended intrathecal chemotherapy (chemotherapy introduced into the spinal cord via lumbar puncture) rather than cranial irradiation for central nervous system prophylaxis because of the lower risk of brain toxicity with the intrathecal approach, a particular concern in someone like Aurora who already had some baseline cognitive issues.

Aurora underwent induction with a combination of four drugs - vincristine, dexamethasone, asparaginase, and doxorubicin. She also received central nervous system prophylaxis with intrathecal cytarabine, methotrexate, and hydrocortisone.

Other than one episode of serious infection which required treatment in isolation in the intensive care unit for several days, and some mild neuropathy in her hands and feet – most likely secondary to the vincristine – which actually resolved over the next several months, Aurora tolerated her induction well. Of course, she lost all of the luscious, dark brown hair which Katie had tenderly brushed, braided, and curled for years.

In an overt statement of loving maternal solidarity, Katie had her own head shaved. When she arrived in Aurora’s hospital room the following day, Aurora did a double take and then burst out into peals of laughter.

As expected, Aurora also charmed the entire medical team, as well as most of the rest of the patients and staff on the pediatric hematology ward.

During Aurora’s six month consolidation phase, Katie and Jacob, in consultation with representatives from the school, decided it would be best if Aurora repeated third grade the following year since her treatment had caused her to miss so much school time.

Aurora began her final phase of maintenance during the summer recess period of 2005. Unlike the prior phases, the mainstay of therapy was oral, specifically daily 6-mercaptopurine and weekly methotrexate, along with periodic pulses of various other drugs as well as ongoing intrathecal central nervous system prophylaxis. The key point during this stage was not to reduce vigilance. More specifically, strict ongoing compliance with prolonged oral therapy was of paramount importance. Katie linked the daily therapy with the brushing of her own teeth every morning and added the weekly methotrexate on Mondays. Aurora never missed a dose during the next three and a half years. Other than another episode of infection requiring hospitalization for about a week, Aurora did fine. By late 2008, Jacob and Katie started to hear the words “possible cure” being bandied about, albeit cautiously and heavily caveated.

The team decided to present Aurora with a Christmas present at the end of her long therapeutic ordeal. Jacob felt that something additional was in order. When Aurora came downstairs on Christmas morning, she was greeted by a golden retriever puppy. For some reason, the puppy reminded her of a baby lion, so she called it Elsa. Other than when Aurora was in school, Elsa rarely left her side.

*****

Aurora had started middle school a few months earlier. The school was situated next to the high school at a completely separate location from the elementary school. The buildings were fairly new, as was the staff.

Aurora, like many of her so-called normal peers, had found it physically and emotionally challenging to enter an unfamiliar school at the lowest rung of the social totem pole. The extra burden of incipient puberty and its associated hormonal maelstrom made it all that more arduous.

Katie attended the first parent-teacher conference without Jacob who was unable to take time off from work. She sat at an oval table in a small school library conference room surrounded by the assistant principal, a speech therapist, a learning specialist, and several of Aurora’s teachers. At the guidance of the assistant principal, each person gave a brief presentation of their experience with Aurora, along with a long list of their concerns. It rapidly became transparent to Katie that few, if any, had either received or incorporated any significant information about how to deal with relatively highly functioning children with Down syndrome. After the last of the pedagogues had opined, the assistant principal leaned over toward Katie.

“So, Mrs. Levine, what do you think we should do with her?”

With great difficulty, Katie resisted her first impulse, which was to beat the woman to death. Biting her lip, she also resisted her second impulse, which was to say: “I don’t know, maybe you fucking morons should just do your jobs and, you know, actually teach the kid. And by the way, unlike the rest of you, she is not a witless idiot.”

Instead, she turned to the assistant principal and, with the same withering gaze that she had bestowed on Dr. Taylor many years earlier, said: “As I am sure you already know from her records in elementary school (Katie pointed to a folder of papers that she had placed on the table in front of her), Aurora has been able to manage quite nicely until now, albeit with some support services. I believe she is just having some of the usual difficulties that children of her age experience when they enter middle school. I know I did, and I suspect many of you did too. I am hoping that, like in elementary school, we can work together to make her time here successful. If you believe that you are unable to provide her with the services and help that she needs and deserves, I will have to take the matter to the Pennsylvania Board of Education.” She wanted to add that she thought some of the local newspapers might also be interested in Aurora’s story, but she realized she had probably said enough.

The assistant principal was silent for a moment. Then, with a bleak, cheerless smile, she responded: “Mrs. Levine, of course we all want the same as you do. We want Aurora to be happy and successful while she is here with us. We look forward to working with you and your daughter. My staff will prepare a detailed IEP that I am sure you will find satisfactory and appropriate.”

That’s better, you miserable bitch. Why does this have to be so hard? And more importantly, when is this poor kid going to catch a break? She has more goodness in her cute, crooked pinky than you will ever have in your entire body, even if you lived a thousand lifetimes.

Predictably, the three years of middle school proved to be pretty wretched.

At the final parent-teacher conference at the end of eighth grade, the assistant principal obsequiously stated that, thanks to the help of Katie and the school staff, Aurora had made great progress and was now ready to enter high school. Pointedly, with her usual empty smile she then added: “And if she is unable to graduate from high school, there is a new Walmart opening between Milford and Matamoras, and I understand that they hire many people just like Aurora.”

Again, Katie contemplated homicide. But it was time to move on and, clearly, these people were beyond redemption. So she said nothing.

*****

During Aurora’s first year of middle school, Jacob’s mom forgot about a pot of soup that she was cooking, and almost set fire to her house. Jacob and Katie decided that she should come and live with them. She was still able to walk, albeit with some difficulty, so they set her up in the third bedroom upstairs. They managed to arrange a relatively quick sale of her house, and set aside most of the proceeds to help with medical and home help expenses.

Aurora and her grandma doted on each other. And for about six months after moving in with them, grandma’s state of mind actually seemed to improve somewhat. Unfortunately, just as Aurora was about to start the second year of her middle school sentence, grandma began to fade and regress quite quickly.

Things started relatively innocuously, almost humorously. Grandma went through a phase where she would meander about the house picking up all manner of objects and, for some reason best known to herself, place them all in the fridge. As Jacob wryly noted, at least he now knew where to find things when they went missing.

Grandma became progressively unable to remember people’s names, even Aurora’s. She developed Parkinson’s Disease which progressively limited her mobility and, eventually caused her to remain bedbound. Her speech became increasingly incoherent, and then effectively ceased altogether. Then she lost control of her bowel and bladder function.

She died peacefully in her sleep shortly after Aurora had started high school. She was eighty-one years old.

For the third time, Jacob visited the small cemetery in Port Jervis. For the first time, he was accompanied by his wife and daughter. Aurora sobbed throughout the brief funeral service. After his mother’s coffin had been lowered into the ground next to her husband, Jacob put some dirt on the end of his shovel and handed it to Aurora. As she gently let the dirt fall, he heard her softly say: “I love you Grandma.”

I love you too, Mom. Say hi to Dad.

Jacob picked up a small stone and put it on top of Eli’s gravestone a few feet away. He took Aurora by one hand and Katie with the other.

“Aurora, let me tell you about your uncle and your granddad. You never met them, but you would have liked them. And they would have absolutely loved you.”

*****

Aurora entered high school in the fall of 2011. Although it was just next door to the middle school, it might as well have been on a different planet. There were several teachers that not only seemed to know what they were doing when it came to special education, they actually seem to care. And as an added bonus, the principal, a man by the name of Mr. Stevens, was a genuinely nice guy.

Although Aurora struggled with some of the academic material at times, Katie’s persistent supplemental coaching and instruction allowed her to pull through and remain mainstreamed with her peers.

In 2014, toward the end of Aurora’s junior year, a significant restructuring occurred in Jacob’s division at Horizon Blue Cross. By then he was sixty years old, and had been working for the company for over twelve years. He was offered early retirement and, given his seniority, a fairly generous severance package. Jacob and Katie agreed that he should accept. After all, if he got bored, as a board-certified cardiologist and internist, he could always find at least part-time work somewhere. Jacob actually looked forward to slowing down and spending more time at home with Katie and Aurora.

Aurora graduated the following May along with her high school classmates. With tears of pride, Jacob and Katie watched her ascend the podium to receive her diploma from the principal. After she took the scroll of paper in her hand, she turned around in her cap and gown and waved blindly at the throng of humanity in the auditorium knowing that her parents were there somewhere. Then she threw back her head and laughed, after which she skipped off the stage.

With the help of some members of her high school academic support team, Aurora had been accepted to nearby Sussex County community college which had a program for people with developmental disabilities. Mutually, they had decided that she should take a year off before starting college.

*****

In November 2015, Jacob noted a dark mole on his upper left arm that seemed to be gradually increasing in size. He went to see a dermatologist in New York. Although he tried to hide it, Jacob noticed the look of concern on the dermatologist’s face as he examined the lesion with his magnification lens. After an excisional biopsy, a CAT scan, and a PET scan, the final diagnosis came back a week later. Jacob had stage IV melanoma with evidence of metastases in his lungs and liver.

*****

Jacob came out of his reverie with the sound of the alarm signifying that his chemotherapy infusion had completed. Nurse Sally Evans came back into the room, just as cheerfully inappropriate as when she had left. After disconnecting him from his hardware, she told him that he would be free to leave after he had completed the mandatory post-chemo observation period of an hour.

From miserable experience, Jacob knew that he would be succumbing to debilitating fatigue sometime within the next several hours. He took out his cell phone and called Katie. He told her that, as usual, he would recuperate overnight in their apartment in New York, and that he would see her sometime before lunch the next day. He told her that he loved her, and to give a big kiss and hug to Aurora.

He had not given a single thought to the incident with the driver of the Mercedes seven years earlier…

*****

PART 2

Several hours later, the driver of that Mercedes was sitting in the passenger seat of a nondescript commercial van. His name was Alexander Yevtushenko. He was now thirty-nine years old. In addition to looking older than he did seven years previously, he was now bulkier and stronger as a result of long hours in the prison gym. He also now bore an irregular four inch scar on his left cheek, courtesy of an altercation with another inmate armed with a screwdriver. That particular inmate had been found in the showers some weeks later with a different screwdriver embedded in his foramen magnum, the gap between the middle of the back of the skull and the top of the spine.

Alexander also had other scars from his time in prison that were less visible, including one from a lacerated anus that required him to use laxatives on a daily basis to avoid discomfort on defecation. That episode had occurred at the hands, and penises, of a group of black prisoners shortly after his arrival in prison, before they knew who he was. There were three of them, and they were released almost simultaneously several years before him. Alexander’s younger brothers had methodically tracked them down and, as per his specific instructions, tortured and killed them all. Then they cut off their penises and testicles and stuffed them in their mouths.

The van was parked on the side of a private roadway about one hundred yards away from the entrance of Katie and Jacob’s driveway. It was almost six o’ clock in the evening, and there was about another hour of progressively fading daylight left.

They had been parked for around twenty minutes. Alexander’s younger brother Fyodor was in the driver seat. Their mother had been an avid devotee of Russian literature and had named them, respectively, after Alexander Pushkin and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Fyodor was holding a cell phone up to his ear. There was no one at the other end but, to any passing vehicle, it looked like the van had pulled off the road so that the driver could receive directions.

They had been monitoring the flow of vehicles in and out of the residential development. It seemed that, on average, there was no more than one or two vehicles every five minutes. That was good. And after more people returned home from work, the flow should decrease even further.

Through their various contacts in law enforcement, it had been a fairly straightforward exercise to locate Jacob’s name and address from the picture of his license plate on Alexander’s phone. It took only a modicum of further digging to reveal that Jacob was now retired, and therefore likely to be at home on a Thursday evening in March.

Fyodor put the van into drive and eased it gently forward. He turned into the gently curved driveway, and proceeded towards the garage at the side of the house. He stopped and parked about fifty feet from the front door, nose first. The brothers exited the van, and Alexander went around to the back and opened the swing doors. They were both wearing matching plain brown overalls and baseball caps. Alexander took his Glock 19 out of his shoulder holster with his right hand. He reached into the van and pulled out a medium-size plain brown box. The box was empty, but it was sealed and had a professional looking label on it. He placed his hands on the box in such a way that his right hand and gun would not be seen by whoever opened the door. He pushed the van doors shut with his hip so that no one could see the various weapons and cans of gasoline that were inside. He planted an innocuous smile on his face, and started walking towards the front door. Fyodor mimicked his brother’s smile and stood benignly by the van. They both could hear a dog barking from inside the house. As the front door eased open, Alexander kept smiling and held the box out in front of his chest, his right hand hidden from view. He tightened his grip on the Glock.

*****

The driveway sensor alarm had sounded, and Elsa had started barking. Katie went to the front room and looked out. She saw a somewhat beaten up plain white van moving slowly up the driveway towards the house.

Probably Amazon farming their delivery work out to some locals again.

“Looks like a delivery,” she called out to Aurora who was having a snack in the kitchen.

She watched as the van pulled to a stop near the front door. The driver and the passenger exited, and she noted they were both wearing identical brown work overalls and baseball caps. The man on the passenger side moved to the back of the van, opened the rear doors, and disappeared from view. He reappeared a few seconds later holding a box, and started walking towards the front door. He was muscularly built and had prominent facial features. But he was smiling, as was the driver who was standing by the side of the van. Maybe it was just the identical clothing, but they looked a lot like one another.

I bet they’re Polish. Anyway, they look friendly enough.

With Elsa barking madly at her heels , she went to the front door and opened it.

*****

“We have a delivery for a Mr. Levine.”

“He is not here right now, but I am his wife, and I can take it.”

The man appeared to contemplate the news for a moment.

“Do you want me to leave it here on the front step?”

“No, you can hand it to me, thanks.”

As the man handed the box over, she could tell immediately that it felt unnaturally light. Then she saw the Glock.

“Don’t scream, and don’t be stupid, and you won’t get hurt. You’re going to turn around slowly now, and walk back into the house.”

He was right in front of her now and the gun barrel was pressed into her sternum. She noted that he was no longer smiling, and that his eyes were dark and dead.

As she turned around, he put his left hand around her neck, and wrapped his fingers firmly around her windpipe, bracing them with his thumb pushed into the nape of her neck. She could now feel the gun barrel against the middle of her spine, and he pushed her forward with it.

“Talk nice to the dog.”

Elsa saw them enter in in tandem, and her barking transitioned into a confused whimper. She approached them, slowly, head down.

“Good girl, Elsa. Good girl.”

Before Katie could finish, she heard the gun roar, and saw Elsa’s skull explode in a shower of blood and tissue.

Reflexively, she screamed in horror. But no sound came out because the man had tightened his grip around her trachea.

She heard her daughter cry out from the kitchen, and the sound of running footsteps on tile. When Aurora came around the corner and saw her murdered dog on the floor and her mother being held at gunpoint by a stranger, she screamed again. At least she started to. Fyodor, who had entered the house close behind his brother, had also heard Aurora’s initial cry. He had positioned himself strategically flat against the wall so that she could not see him as she stepped through the doorway. Or his gun. He hit her squarely in the face with it, and she crumpled to the ground. He bent down and put the muzzle of the gun against her bleeding nose.

“Shut the fuck up.”

Aurora, still dazed, began sobbing. Fyodor slapped her face with his other hand. Hard. Twice. Aurora stopped sobbing.

“Your gunshot was fucking loud. Some neighbors probably heard it, and they might come by to see what’s going on.”

“No chance. This is fucking hillbilly country. Everyone here hunts and owns guns. Hearing gunfire is totally normal for them.”

He is right. Unfortunately.

“Okay, Mrs. Levine,” said the one who shot Elsa, “where is your husband?” He sounded calm, like he was asking about the weather. He had released his grip on her throat. A little.

She kept looking down at the slowly expanding pool of blood under what was left of Elsa’s head, and felt like throwing up. Then maternal anger took over.

“Aurora, don’t cry sweetie. It’s going to be all right. Mommy’s here with you.”

The man slapped her stingingly in the face, and spun her around to face him.

“I’m talking to you. Concentrate on me. Just me. Once more, where is your husband?”

“Like I told you, he’s not home now.”

“Don’t talk down to me, you stupid bitch. I asked you where he is, not where he isn’t.”

“He’s in New York.”

“When is he coming back?”

“Not tonight.”

“Really? Why not?” He sounded skeptical, almost bemused.

If I tell them the truth, maybe they’ll just leave. Then again, they already killed Elsa…

“He stays there overnight on business sometimes.”

“Really? I was told he was retired.”

Who are these guys?

She didn’t answer.

“Okay, tell you what. You and I are going to take a little tour around the house now, just to check. And my brother is going to stay here with your daughter and keep her company, just to make sure you don’t do anything stupid.”

He took up his prior position, standing behind her with his left hand around her neck and the gun in her back. He made her take him on an excruciatingly detailed survey of the house, including all closets and bathrooms, the basement, and even the attic. When they were in the basement, she had said: “If you want money, I have some in the safe in the corner there. I also have some jewelry.”

“That’s not what I came for, but since you’re offering so nicely….”

He had stuffed the small wad of cash and the jewelry into various pockets of his overalls.

When they returned, they found Fyodor sitting at the kitchen table with Aurora. She was holding a bloodied paper towel against her nose, and he was casually holding his gun pointed in her general direction, the butt resting on the tabletop. He seemed to be studying her intently, and it made Katie’s blood run cold.

The man who had escorted her around the house, and was clearly the leader, addressed the one who was sitting. “It’s still possible he comes back later tonight. I reckon we can probably stay here with the van parked outside for about an hour or so, or until it gets dark, whichever comes first. After that, it’s going to start to look a little suspicious. So, the question is, what can we do to entertain ourselves in the meantime?”

Fyodor leered back at him. “I think baby doll here is one of them Mongol retards. I never fucked a retard before.”

“Leave her alone, you stinking animal! If you so much as lay a finger on her, I’ll kill you.”

Alexander slapped her again, much harder this time.

“You don’t do the threatening around here, bitch. That’s my job.” Turning to his brother, he said: “Knock yourself out. Remember, you only got an hour at most. And keep your ears open in case daddy comes home.”

With a chortle, Fyodor grabbed Aurora by the hair and started dragging her towards one of the bedrooms upstairs. Aurora began crying again, and Fyodor clamped his other hand around her mouth. Unable to contain herself, Katie lunged towards him. Alexander’s gun barrel came down hard across the back of her head causing her to fall forward on to the floor.

“Like I said, bitch, you’re not in charge, I am.”

Dazed, Katie felt herself be lifted off the ground and dragged into the living room. He was holding her by the back of her skirt waistband. As he stood her up near the sofa, she could hear the mixed sounds of Aurora’s crying and Fyodor’s grunting from one of the bedrooms. She could feel Alexander standing right behind her. She was only slightly shorter than he was. Violently, she braced her feet and snapped her head back. The back of her head broke his nose causing him to cry out in pain and release his grip. She started running towards the fireplace to grab a poker. But he was too fast for her. He tackled her from behind, then sat down on her back and smashed her face into the floor. She blacked out.

When she came to, she was bent over the back of the sofa, face forward. His left hand was pushing down hard between her shoulder blades. She felt his other hand yank her skirt and underwear down to her ankles, and then immediately grab her right wrist and pull it behind her back and up towards her shoulders. The pain was excruciating and immobilizing. His left hand was now free, and she could feel him fumbling behind her. Then she felt his erect penis against her buttocks.

“Your husband might not be around, but I’m going to give you both something to remember me by. And this is going to make up for what happened to me.”

He forced his penis into her anus and then into her rectum, and began thrusting viciously. Dimly, from the nearby bedroom upstairs she heard Aurora’s wails and the sound of flesh slapping flesh.

After he finished, he pushed her roughly off the sofa and onto the floor. As she fell, she could feel his semen dripping down her thigh. She could also feel blood.

As she lay there half naked trying to collect herself, she heard Fyodor come downstairs into the living room. Aurora was not with him.

“Where’s the girl?”

“The little bitch tried to bite me. So I punched her. She hit her head on the corner of the bedside table. I’m pretty sure she’s dead.”

With a primal scream, Katie forced herself onto her knees and lunged at him. Her nails made contact with his face and pulled off a satisfying chunk of flesh. Fyodor howled and spun away. She wheeled on him and aimed for his eyes. For the second time, she heard the roar of the Glock. It was immediately followed by a searing pain in her left leg as her tibia shattered at mid shaft.

She was on the floor again. The only thing she could focus on was getting to Fyodor who was still howling away clutching his bleeding face. She started dragging herself along the floor toward him, leaving a large, wide, wet trail of blood in her wake.

“Feisty little bitch, ain’t you.”

Alexander had caught up to her and pulled her over onto her back.

With as much venom as she could muster, Katie spat into his face.

He grabbed her neck with both hands and started to squeeze hard. The last things she saw were his dark, dead eyes, and his bloody, broken nose.

Aurora…

*****

Alexander went out to the van and came back with two red plastic five-gallon gasoline cans. He gave one to Fyodor.

“Stop sniveling. Now go pour this all over the girl and wherever you were with her. Also put some on the floor wherever you were bleeding. We want to make sure there’s no way they find any DNA.”

He took the second can and began dousing Katie’s body. He then poured liberal amounts on the floor, particularly wherever he saw bloodstains. He continued into the kitchen, and then emptied the remains of the can on the dog in the front hallway.

He called out to his brother in the bedroom: “You ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, on three, light it up. And get ready to move. This place is going go up fast.”

As they turned out of the driveway, they could see flames dancing devilishly behind the windows of the front room,

*****

Jake’s cell phone began trilling madly at 2:08 am.

This can’t be good.

“Mr. Levine?” A man’s voice, a stranger.

“Who’s calling? Do you know that it’s two in the morning?”

“This is Fire Chief Mackey from the Milford fire department. We got your cell phone number from our files. I’m sorry to tell you that there’s been a big fire at your house. By the time we got here, it was too late to save it.”

Jacob was still trying to wake up, so it took him some time to process the information.

“Is my family okay?”

“We don’t know yet. We can’t locate them. It’s possible that they’re staying with some friends or neighbors. We haven’t been able to talk to everybody yet. Do you know where they would most likely go?”

Jacob mentioned a couple of the neighbors who they were most friendly with. Chief Davis told him that they would check and let him know. He did not tell him that his men had in fact already spoken to everyone in the development.

“Is it possible that they were not at home yesterday Mr. Levine?”

“I don’t think so. My wife called me earlier in the day and I’m pretty sure she was home at the time. I’m in New York now recovering from some chemo that I had yesterday.”

The Chief paused. “There is another thing Mr. Levine. We don’t know yet for sure, but from the way the fire behaved, I’m pretty sure some sort of accelerant was used.”

“What?”

“I’m afraid it looks like it might be arson, Mr. Levine. I’ve already notified the state police. They’ll probably be getting in touch with you shortly.”

*****

There was not much traffic at that time of the morning, and Jacob arrived at his driveway in Pennsylvania just before 4:30 am. The house had essentially burned to the ground. Some remaining chunks of it were still glowing, albeit weakly. There were two fire trucks in front of the house, and a couple of firemen were standing around chatting to each other. A few neighbors had come by to ogle, but they had been pushed back by the firemen, and most of them had gone back to bed. There was also a state police cruiser in the driveway. As Jacob parked and got out of his SUV, the driver of the cruiser got out of his vehicle. He walked up to Jacob and introduced himself.

“I assume you’re Mr. Levine. I am state trooper Davis, and I’d like to ask you a couple of questions if I may.”

Strangely, trooper Davis was black. Very black. There were hardly any black people of any sort in the whole of Pike county, and Jacob had certainly never seen a black policeman in all the years he had lived there. In the predawn darkness, the only part of trooper Davis’s face that Jacob could clearly see were his teeth.

“Have you been able to locate my wife and daughter? We also have a dog, a golden retriever called Elsa.”

“Unfortunately, not yet. We’re continuing to ask around, and we’re developing a public service announcement for radio and TV.”

Jacob steadied himself. He gestured toward the steaming pile of ash behind them. “Is it possible that they are still in there?” The thought had been rolling around in his head for the entire ninety plus minute drive from New York.

Trooper Davis paused and cocked his head a little. Jacob couldn’t discern his features, but it felt like he was being studied.

“Yes, I’m afraid it is possible. We won’t know for sure until we’re able to send our arson investigation team in. And we can’t do that until were given the all clear by the fire department. They say that should be later on today.”

He continued. “I know this is a difficult time for you Mr. Levine, but I would like to ask you a few questions if I may.”

Oh God! Katie and Aurora’s still smoldering bodies might be lying less than fifty feet away, and I’m just supposed to stand here chitchatting with you. Are you fucking nuts?

“I’d like to go in and look around for myself if you don’t mind. I know it’s dangerous, but it’s my life, and I’ll take responsibility. I have to see if I can find my family.” By the time he finished, he was almost shouting.

Trooper Davis reached out his right arm and took Jacob by the shoulder. It was partly comforting, yet simultaneously subtly threatening. And Jacob noted that trooper Davis’ forearm was bigger than some people’s thighs.

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that Mr. Levine. You’d be disturbing a crime scene.” He waited for Jacob to calm down before releasing his shoulder.

“Again, I’d like to ask you some questions if I may Mr. Levine.”

Jacob, calmer now, briefly pondered whether he should get a lawyer before answering any questions. He had nothing to hide.

“Sure. What would like to know?”

“Well, for one, do you know anyone who would want to do something like this to you?”

Jacob considered the question carefully. “No.”

“What about your wife?”

“Definitely no.”

“Daughter.”

“As you probably already know by now, she had Down syndrome, which meant that there were always the usual bunch of assholes around who like to be mean to people with disabilities. But I don’t think any of them would do anything like this.”

Trooper Davis paused again.

“And where were you yesterday, Mr. Levine?”

“I was in New York City. As I told Fire Chief Mackey, I was there getting chemo. I have melanoma. I get tired after the treatment, and I often stay overnight in our apartment in New York.”

“I’m sorry to hear about that.” Trooper Davis paused once more. “I have to ask you this Mr. Levine. Are there people who can corroborate what you just told me?”

Jacob felt the blood rush to his temples.

Calm down. It sucks, but the guy’s just doing his job.

“The hospital will have a record of my visit, and Sally Evans was the nurse who took care of me during my chemo. And there’s a doorman in my condo who saw me enter the building yesterday, and another one who saw me leave this morning. The building also has a TV security system that you can check if you need to.”

Trooper Davis took down the relevant details in a small notebook. They then both retreated to their own cars to sit and wait for the all clear from the fire department, and the arrival of the arson investigation team.

*****

As trooper Davis had surmised, they received the all clear later that day. The arson investigation team arrived the following day. Jacob was told that it might take them weeks if not months to complete their work.

Despite multiple and repeated interviews of every household on the development, there was no clear consensus as to what had happened or why. One neighbor had said that he thought he had seen a pale colored van leaving the development at around the time the fire was likely to have started, but he was too far away to see the exact color and make of the vehicle, and way too far away to see specific details such as license plates or numbers of occupants. No one mentioned hearing any gunfire.

Jacob had initially hoped and prayed for the possibility that Katie, Aurora and Elsa were still alive and safe somewhere. However, after forty-eight hours had passed, he reluctantly conceded that this was vanishingly unlikely. Even if they had somehow escaped the fire, they surely would have made themselves known by now. Which left only two possibilities. Either they had in fact died in the fire, or they had, for some unfathomable reason, been kidnapped. He discussed the letter possibility with trooper Davis.

“Sure, I guess that’s possible. We do see the occasional kidnapping of children by perverts or parents that are separated from each other. But I would have to say that a double kidnapping of this nature would be pretty unusual around here. If it is kidnapping, you should be getting some sort of ransom notice pretty soon. Also, it doesn’t explain what might have happened to your dog, unless somehow the dog was kidnapped too.” Jacob could tell that trooper Davis did not believe one iota in his kidnapping theory.

The state police circulated several public service announcements asking for help in locating Katie, Aurora., and Elsa. Several neighbors had posted flyers in surrounding communities and local stores. There had been a few glimmers of hope. There were various sightings of two women apparently fitting the given description - a mall in New Jersey fifteen miles away; a convenience store in Port Jervis; a gas station in Milford, After due investigation, nothing had panned out. There was no news at all about Elsa.

After a week, during which he had stayed in a local motel, Jacob decided to return to their apartment in New York and wait there for the results of the arson investigation. This had the added benefit of physically removing him from the endless barrage of agonizing conversations with allegedly sympathetic neighbors.

He received a call from trooper Davis about three weeks later.

“Mr. Levine, I’m afraid I have some difficult news for you. The investigators did confirm arson. They also found evidence of the remains of two females and one canine at the scene. We don’t know yet for sure, but we think this may be your wife and daughter and dog. I’m sorry.”

Jacob tried to answer him, but no words came out.

“The investigators said that the three remains were lying quite separate from one another which, in their experience of these things, is fairly unusual. There is something else Mr. Levine. They also found two bullet casings - one near the remains of one of the females and the other near the dog. It seems that we may be dealing with more than just arson.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that it is possible that someone shot and killed your family and your dog and then set fire to the house.”

Jacob was unable to integrate what he had just heard. Weakly, he asked for trooper Davis to repeat himself. As he listened to the clinically detached words again, his brain was bombarded with dueling images – Katie, Aurora, and Elsa living, laughing, loving; and hallucinatory flashes of some nameless, faceless assassin pumping bullets into them. Then all the life seemed to drain out of him, and he started to sob. Great gouts of grief poured out of his soul as he hung up the phone.

*****

The investigators recovered two small items of jewelry – Katie’s wedding ring and a gold locket that they had given Aurora on her seventeenth birthday. Despite being badly damaged by the fire, Jacob was able to positively identify both items. Through trooper Davis, the investigators informed Jacob that it appeared that one of the bodies had suffered a skull fracture, and the other a fracture of the left tibia consistent with a high velocity projectile.

Shortly thereafter, based predominantly on dental analysis, Jacob received official confirmation of the deaths of Katie and Aurora Levine. He consented to cremation at the conclusion of the investigation. Eventually, he was asked to come to the Regional Forensic Crime Lab in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and take delivery of three plain urns containing the final remains of his wife, daughter, and dog.

For the fourth time in his life, Jacob attended a funeral service at the cemetery in Port Jervis. This time, other than the rabbi and an official mourner from the congregation, he was alone. Katie’s parents had both died some years previously. Her two older siblings had gradually lost touch with her over the years. Jacob had no close family left to speak of. Katie and he had naturally developed friends over the years, both in New York and Pennsylvania, but Jacob was in no mood for seeing friends. Before leaving, he picked up three small stones - one for Mom, one for Dad, and one, of course, for Eli.

The night before, he had gone for a drive on Route 97 which borders the Delaware River on the New York side north of Port Jervis. He found a suitably deserted spot where he could park and walk down to the river edge. He had the three urns with him. He poured the entire contents of Elsa’s urn into the gentle, boundless, inky eddies.

Good girl Elsa. Look after them.

Simultaneously, he then poured out a small quantity of the contents of the remaining two urns.

You will be together forever, and forever I will love you.

*****

“Mr. Levine, again please accept our sincere condolences for your loss. I would imagine that you’ve been thinking about who might possibly have had a reason to do this to your family. I was hoping you might share anything you might’ve come up with.”

Jacob was sitting in a small office in the Pike County Pennsylvania State Police Station on Route 402 outside Hawley. Across the table from him sat trooper Davis and another man who had introduced himself as Mark Hansen, FBI Special Agent. He looked like a younger version of Sergeant Joe Friday from the old television show Dragnet. The two of them had just finished informing him that, due to the heat of the fire, they were unable to obtain any useful information from the bullet casings other than they seemed to have come from a 9 mm weapon. They had added that, unfortunately, the investigation had not yet yielded any further significant results.

“Actually, there is something. It hardly seems possible given the timeframe, but it’s the only thing I can come up with.” Jacob recounted the episode with the driver of the Mercedes seven years previously. Both trooper Davis and FBI Special Agent Hansen took notes in almost identical small pads.

Special Agent Hansen looked up first. “Thank you, Mr. Levine. We will look into this and get back to you.”

*****

Two weeks later, they did. The three of them met again in the same drab office. This time, FBI Special Agent Hansen did the talking.

“Mr. Levine, we contacted the New Jersey State Police, and they were able to track down the incident you told us about. They had provided the license plate information that you gave them to the New York State Police. The owner of the vehicle is a guy by the name of Alexander Yevtushenko, and he was well known to New York law enforcement. They pulled him over somewhere in Brooklyn later on that same day, and they found guns and drugs in the vehicle. Because of Mr. Yevtushenko’s long criminal history and prior arrests, he was sent to jail for fifteen years. He was released after serving only seven for so-called ‘good behavior’. That was about three months ago.

“The NYPD and the FBI went to visit Mr. Yevtushenko at his office in Brooklyn last week. I was there. We asked him about his whereabouts on Thursday, March 22, 2018, the date of the fire at your home.”

“And?”

“Let’s just say that Mr. Yevtushenko is not the type of man who is easily intimidated. He stated that he was involved all day with legitimate business dealings with various associates in Brooklyn, and that he had a long list of witnesses willing to swear to that fact. We have interviewed four of them so far, and they all corroborate his story.”

“So what does this all mean?”

“Unfortunately, it means that we may be hitting a brick wall with this part of the investigation.”

“Do you think he’s the guy who did it?”

“I just deal with the facts, Mr. Levine. So far, I have no definite evidence to support that Mr. Yevtushenko is involved.”

God damn you, Joe Friday.

“I get it, but what does your gut say? We’re talking about my family here. You probably have a family yourself. How would you feel if they were murdered?”

Agent Hansen paused. He looked over at trooper Davis. Then he looked at the slumped, defeated figure of Jacob Levine sitting across the table. He relaxed his posture and leaned forward.

“Off the record, I think he might’ve done it. This guy Yevtushenko is bad people, really bad. Certainly bad enough to be able to do something like this. Also, there was one specific thing that bothered me. At the end of our conversation, he told me to tell you that he was sorry to hear about what it happened to your wife, daughter, and dog. It wasn’t just that he was smug when he said this. I had told him that we were investigating the murder of a woman and her daughter, but I never mentioned the dog. I also never told him about you. He didn’t mention you by name, he just referred to you as ‘the husband’. But how did he know you even existed. And how did he know about the dog?

“Unfortunately, that’s not going to be enough to charge him with anything concrete at this time. After all, he could just say he assumed that there was a husband and that the mention of a dog was just a slip of the tongue. We’ll keep probing, but unless something new comes up, were going to have a tough time moving against him. I’m sorry.”

Thanks anyway Joe Friday. You’re actually okay.

*****

There was still a chance that it was not Alexander Yevtushenko. It could have been a random act by a random crazy person. He had to know. He had to know for sure.

Then, a couple of days later, his cell phone rang. It was a New York area number. He took the call.

“Jacob Levine?”

“Yes. Who is calling?”

“Never mind that.” The voice was male, with a slight Eastern European lilt. Still chillingly familiar, even after all these years.

“About your wife and daughter. And your dog. I want you to know that this was all your fault. You should have taken the money and just shut up. Or you should have been home. Either way, your fault. Have a nice life.”

Then the voice hung up.

The words burned through his being. It was true about it being his fault. At least the first part about the money. Maybe. But not the second. If he had been home, there would just have been one more dead body in the embers.

He called trooper Davis, told him about the call, and recited the New York number from his cell phone log.

“Did he give his name?”

“No.”

“We will of course look into it, but unless he’s a total idiot, which unfortunately isn’t likely, he probably used a disposable phone.”

So, the police and the FBI would still not be able to come up with anything definite. But, at least now Jacob knew for sure. Slowly, the void in his heart began to morph into something dark and deathly. He knew what he needed to do. All he had to work out was how, when, and where.

*****

PART 3

The first order of business was to find out where Alexander Yevtushenko lived. It actually wasn’t that hard. Jacob contacted a friend of a friend who was a criminal lawyer in New York City.

“Mr. Hollister, I would like you to get me all the official criminal records you can obtain on a Alexander Yevtushenko. I am told that he has a significant criminal history, and I believe he was arrested in New York around seven years ago. This is a personal matter, and I would prefer not to discuss the reasons for my request at this time. Can you help me?”

The lawyer had hesitated, initially. Then he put out a number. Four thousand dollars - half now, the other half on delivery of the documents. Jacob knew that he could probably have obtained the information himself under some sort of freedom of information request, but this would likely have taken an indeterminate amount of time. And it would have left a paper trail. So he agreed.

Shakespeare’s character in Henry VI was right, first kill all the lawyers.

It only took a week. Jacob was not particularly interested in the sordid details of Alexander’s criminal past. He found what he was looking for on the copy of the sentencing document - Alexander Yevtushenko’s lived at 165 Midwood Street in Brooklyn.

*****

Jacob was continuing to receive treatment with Opdivo every four weeks. He had work to do, and needed to stay alive, at least for now. He went to visit Midwood Street the day after his latest infusion.

Number165 was located between Nostrand and Rogers Avenues. It was an elegant three-story townhouse on a charming, quiet residential street. The two closest subway stations, Winthrop Street and Sterling Street, were each about five blocks away, and were served by the number two subway line. On foot, either option would do, but, because of the one-way traffic systems, the Sterling Street station was more quickly accessible by car. Almost subconsciously, he noted that the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center and Kings County Hospital were nearby.

Jacob contacted several real estate agencies, and asked them to try to find him a dog-friendly apartment to rent within easy walking distance of 165 Midwood Street. It took almost a month, but eventually they found a one bedroom apartment in a modest townhouse about two blocks away on Maple Street. During the search, he managed to grow out a luscious full-face beard. He also bought an orthopedic walking stick.

As soon as the apartment arrangements were finalized, Jacob visited the ASPCA pet adoption facilities on East 92nd Street in Manhattan, and came out with a two year old Springer Spaniel mutt named Jenny. They moved into their new digs the next day.

Jacob began taking Jenny out for walks several times a day. Maple Street ran parallel to Midwood, and he developed a circuit – Maple to Nostrand to Midwood to Rogers back to Maple. He spent an inordinate amount of time lingering near 165 Midwood. The walking stick gave him license to walk slowly, like a little old man. A harmless, disabled, little old man out walking his dog.

He needed a systematic way to capture his surveillance data. He bought a spiral-bound notebook and labeled the top of the pages in groups of five, one for each workday in order starting with Monday. Using a ruler, he divided, each page into three equal rows labeled, respectively, morning, afternoon, and night. The three times for workweek one were 5 to 6 am, 11am to noon, 5 to 6 pm. The times for week two were each shifted forward by exactly one hour. This pattern was repeated for each subsequent week so that by the end of the sixth week he would effectively have collected data that spanned the entire time period between 5 am and 11 pm for each weekday. He figured that being seen out on the street either before or after those times might draw unwelcome attention. He also figured that Saturdays and Sundays might be less predictable and therefore less revealing. He also needed those days for other activities.

Week one began the following Monday. After returning from each walk, Jacob wrote a brief, contemporaneous note of what, if anything, he had seen at 165 Midwood Street.

He made sure that, irrespective of the weather, he always wore a long but comfortable coat when he was out walking the dog. At some point he was going to have to hide something under there.

*****

Gradually, steadily, Jacob went off the grid.

First, he sold their condominium in New York. It reminded him too much of Katie and Aurora. The mortgage had been paid off over five years earlier, and the apartment had more than tripled in value since the time of the original purchase over thirty years ago. After taxes and fees, the transaction netted him over seven hundred thousand dollars. His combined assets, including savings, IRA, and stock portfolio now totaled almost two and a half million dollars.

After some internet sleuthing, he contacted the Overseas Bank of Singapore online. He was informed that he could open a US dollar-based account by merely filling out some electronic forms and providing scanned copies of various identification documents. They would help with the wire transfer of all his assets to their bank. They would also provide him with a combined debit/credit card, help him set up any automatic bill paying on request, and transfer cash on demand to virtually any bank in the world. They would even pay him interest on any credit balance at a rate at least one percentage point higher than the highest money market rates in the United States.

After transferring his assets to Singapore, Jacob arranged for auto bill pay for his rent and utilities. The goal was to pay for everything else in cash. He canceled all his existing credit cards, and opened a checking account at the Dime Community Bank of Brooklyn which had several ATMs within easy walking distance.

Jacob had one more request of his new bank. In the event that they did not hear from him for a continuous period of six months, they were to assume that he was dead, and arrange for the transfer of any and all remaining assets to the National Association for Down Syndrome. It required only a few more forms, and some leading edge electronic notarization services.

These guys are awesome. What’s not to love?

*****

He needed a new car. It had to be reliable, have decent cargo capacity, and be relatively unobtrusive. For where he was eventually going, it also had to have four-wheel-drive. He settled on a Subaru. Armed with a letter of credit from his new Singapore bank and the trade in value of his aging Porsche Cayenne, he took delivery of a well-equipped gray metallic late 2018 Subaru Outback Limited. He had them make the paperwork out in the name of Katie Levine. He told the salesman that he was buying the car as a gift for his wife. It was sort of true.

After experimenting with various forms of transportation, he determined that the fastest way for him to get out of Brooklyn was to first take a subway north as far as possible and pick up his car at that point. He found a reasonably priced indoor garage within walking distance of the Nereid Avenue station near the end of the number two subway line in the Bronx, and used cash to pay for a spot for three months in advance with an option to renew monthly as needed. From that location, to head north all he had to do was travel a couple of blocks to the Bronx River Parkway entrance near Montefiore Medical Center, and follow it north for about two miles until it joined the Cross County Parkway. There he would have multiple options, including continuing on the Bronx River Parkway, heading a little west to either the Saw Mill River Parkway or Interstate 87, or east a tad to the Hutchinson River Parkway. Prevailing traffic conditions at the time would dictate his choice.

He tried out his itinerary that weekend. From Alexander Yevtushenko’s house, without rushing, it took less than an hour for him to be sitting in his Subaru about to merge onto the Bronx River Parkway. From there, depending on traffic, it would take about three hours to get to Albany, and then another four or five to get to the Canadian border at Ogdensburg.

The following week, he took a trip to Canada in his new Subaru. Jenny went along for the ride. At the border crossing in Ogdensburg, the Canadians did not even ask to see his passport.

*****

He wanted mountains. There was something about their pristine purity that reminded him of Katie.

After crossing the border, he started heading west. The route took him along the northern coasts of Lakes Huron and Superior, and then on to Winnipeg. There he joined Route 1 which took him all the way to Canmore, a small town of about 14,000 people on the south eastern edge of Banff National Park in the Canadian Rockies. At almost 2800 miles, it was certainly not the shortest trajectory from New York, but it was the one that got you into Canada the quickest.

He paced himself at approximately 500 miles or eight hours of driving per day, whichever came first. Jenny and he stayed in a series of drab but pet friendly motels along the way. They arrived in Canmore on the sixth day after leaving Brooklyn.

Originally a mining town, Canmore had undergone a significant resurgence when the 1988 winter Olympics were held in Calgary only fifty miles to the east. Since then, the town had remained a popular destination for outdoor enthusiasts, particularly cross-country skiers. More importantly, there were spectacular views of snowcapped mountains in all directions, most notably the aptly named triumvirate of the Three Sisters.

He had decided to stay at the Copperstone Resort in Dead Man’s Flats a few minutes south of town as TripAdvisor had indicated that it was the best pet friendly hotel in the area. After befriending the manager, he obtained the name of a reputable local real estate agent, he set about finding a suitable long-term rental property.

It took less than a week to find what he wanted - a fully furnished modern three bedroom house on the southwestern outskirts of the town with an unparalleled view of the Three Sisters from the large elevated deck at the back. It was more house than he really needed, and at $4500 per month, it certainly wasn’t cheap. But then again, it had the bucolic scenery he desired. And he wasn’t planning to live there forever.

After contacting his trusty Singapore bank with the relevant details, he signed a six months lease with an effective date two months away, and an option to renew.

He also needed a local Canadian bank. His financial acolytes at the Overseas Bank of Singapore informed him that they had a “special relationship” with HSBC, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Corporation. HSBC had multiple branches and ATMs in relatively nearby Calgary, and the congenial folks in Singapore offered to facilitate the opening of an HSBC account that would require only minimal effort and documentation on his part. With the help of an initial deposit of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the account was active and ready for use before Jacob left Canmore two days later. On his way through Calgary, he stopped at one of the HSBC branches and withdrew fifty thousand Canadian dollars in cash.

Three days later, he stopped at a well inventoried used-car business on the eastern edge of Winnipeg, near Fun Mountain Waterslide Park and the junction of Route One and the circular road around the city. After a couple of test drives, he selected a red, late model, low mileage GMC Sierra. Thirty-one thousand Canadian dollars in cash got him a full tank of gas, expedited paperwork, and directions to both a local car accessory dealership and a storage facility capable of accommodating full size vehicles. After picking up a truck battery trickle charger, he drove to the storage facility less than a mile away, paid for three months in advance in cash, and parked his truck. Before leaving, he opened the hood and connected one end of the trickle charger to the battery and the other into an electrical outlet in the wall. The owner of the storage facility offered to drive him back to his Subaru which was still parked at the car dealership.

Four days later, Jenny and he were back in their apartment in Brooklyn. It was mid September. It was time to start a second six-week surveillance period. It was also time to get a gun.

*****

The gun would have to be able to be concealed, and carried easily and unobtrusively under a coat. This meant that any long gun was out of the question. Handguns, either revolvers or semiautomatics, were clearly the easiest to conceal and carry. However, unless you were an expert, handguns were also the most difficult to use accurately at even short distances, particularly in uncontrolled situations. In fact, for most people armed with a handgun and under stress, the most effective way for them to hit a proximate target is to just throw the gun at it. Jacob did not have the time to become a handgun marksman.

After scouring multiple websites, he came across the twenty-six and three eighths inch long Mossberg 590 Shockwave, a ruthless looking weapon that is essentially a pump action shotgun without a stock. However, since it is not designed to be fired from the shoulder, it is not officially considered a shotgun. It is also clearly not a pistol. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has designated the 590 Shockwave a “firearm” as per the Gun Control Act. This has effectively allowed it to skirt various onerous federal and state gun regulation and documentation requirements.

In either the typical 12 gauge or the less common 20 gauge configuration, the Shockwave can accommodate up to six shells. That number seemed about right . After some further research, including various YouTube videos, he thought he would opt for the 20 gauge version because of its somewhat lower overall weight and recoil.

The Mossberg website listed an authorized dealer just outside of Hamlin in Wayne County Pennsylvania. That Saturday, after presenting his Pennsylvania driving license, undergoing a brief automated background check, and forking over $685 in cash, he exited the Hunters’ Gallery sport shop with a brand-new 20gauge Mossberg 590 Shockwave, ten boxes of bright yellow 20 gauge shells, five boxes of shotgun pattern targets, and a three eights inch thick steel gong target. He also bought a hunting license to show in case he was ever stopped by the State Police.

He drove to some state game lands just to the north of Hamlin and found a suitably deserted spot. He set up his targets and started to practice. Even with the supposedly lower recoil 20 gauge format, the thing still kicked like a mule. It was an awkward weapon to handle - if you fired it from hip level as recommended by the manufacturer, it was almost impossible to reproducibly hit the target; if you fired it from shoulder level, it was more accurate, but you had to be careful to avoid getting punched in the nose by your gun grip hand. After several boxes of shells, he settled on a modified shoulder stance. This was going to take some work. He resolved to drive up from the city to practice at least once a week. Going forward he would bring Jenny along. He wanted her to get used to the noise.

Back in Brooklyn, he experimented with various methods of carrying the weapon under a coat. Eventually he settled on a system of two leather straps, each with a quick release carabiner locking mechanism. The gun was carried with its pistol grip nestled firmly under his right armpit, barrel pointing straight down . One strap went over his left shoulder and through the gun’s trigger guard. The other strap went tightly around his waist and through the strap on the underside of the gun’s forearm designed to stabilize his left hand. The result was that the gun was held vertically and snug against the right side of his body. With practice, after opening his coat, he was able to unhook the straps and have the weapon ready to fire in under three seconds.

He started going out with the gun hidden under his coat every time he walked Jenny. He needed to get use to the weight and feel of it.

*****

He was looking for a pattern in the surveillance data, something he could rely on with respect to Alexander Yevtushenko’s comings and goings from his graceful townhouse at 165 Midwood Street. By the end of the fourth week, a tentative pattern had emerged. His records indicated that a gleaming, black S class Mercedes would arrive and park just outside Yevtushenko’s door every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday morning just around 6:30 am. There were two occupants, both men, the driver and another man in the front passenger seat. Sometime between 6:45 and 7:00 am, Yevtushenko would exit his house and enter the backseat of the car. After a few seconds of presumed chit chat, they would drive off.

Jacob needed confirmation. He decided to focus on the Tuesdays and Thursdays. After all, even murderous scumbags might be tempted to take the occasional three-day weekend off. For the next several weeks, he made sure he was walking Jenny on Midwood Street between 6:30 and 7 am. The Tuesday/Thursday pattern held true.

He experimented with various approach tactics. With his dog, his cane, and his little old man slow walk, he ascertained that he could most likely get to within fifty or sixty feet of the Mercedes before attracting undue attention. That should be enough. Shortly after moving into his apartment in Brooklyn, he had bought a NordicTrack treadmill and had been using it regularly, including practicing short sprints.

The timing had to be right. It had to all go down in those few seconds after Yevtushenko entered the car and started schmoozing with his two buddies.

He would have to take out the driver first. That would prevent the car from escaping. Allow two shots for that. Then he would have to turn quickly to the passenger who was likely a bodyguard and therefore probably armed. Two more shots. Jacob felt confident that if he positioned himself close to the front of the vehicle, he could fire those first four rounds reasonably accurately in less than five seconds. Even if Yevtushenko survived the first four shots sitting in the backseat, Jacob would still have two rounds left to deal with him.

Jacob now had his when, where, and how.

*****

The following Tuesday morning, Jacob and Jenny were on Midwood Street just before 6:30 am. He could feel the pistol grip of the Mossberg tight up under his right armpit, most of the weight of the gun being borne by the strap over his left shoulder. It was late November and still dark. The glare from the streetlamps reflected off the puddles from the overnight rain. A few scattered house lights were on and, although the street was empty, there was the feeling of impending bustle in the air.

Jenny had taken care of her toileting needs on the walk over to Midwood Street, and she was calmly sniffing her way alongside him. He could not feel any tugging on her lead.

Jacob had figured that if he was really going to go through with this, sooner rather than later was the best approach. Delaying would just cause him to overthink it and perhaps lose his nerve.

His mouth was dry, and he felt mildly nauseous.

Pull yourself together man. It’s not like you never killed anyone before…

Yeah, but that was by accident, many years ago in residency. You sent some young guy home from the emergency room. He had come in complaining of a vague headache after helping his friend push a stalled car. His vital signs were entirely normal, and you didn’t find anything wrong on physical examination, including a detailed neuro exam. You told him he was probably just stressed out. He smiled at you, and even thanked you.

Two days later the ER medical director called you into his office. He said the guy had collapsed at his home about eight hours after you discharged him from the ER. His wife had called 911. The ambulance crew had tried to revive him, but he was pronounced dead on arrival in the ER. An autopsy had revealed a massive subarachnoid hemorrhage. Post exertional headache is a recognized symptom of early subarachnoid hemorrhage. You didn’t know that at the time you first saw him.

As might have been expected from a man with many years of surgical training, the ER medical director had been brutally blunt.

“If you had done a lumbar puncture when you first saw him, you would have almost certainly found blood. The patient would have then been admitted to the neurosurgery service, and likely would have gone to surgery for treatment of his underlying cerebral aneurysm. He would have likely made a full recovery, and then gone on to lead a normal, long life. You might just as well have shot him in the head when you sent him home from the emergency room.”

Jacob remembered clearly how he had felt. The guy had been only 28 years old, a year younger than Jacob himself at that time. And he had a wife and a three-year-old son. A son who would never get to know his father.

But that terrible episode had actually been the premature death of a young man through an unfortunate and unintended act of medical ignorance. It had not been willful, it had not been premeditated.

Unlike what he was contemplating now.

Pull yourself together. This is not helping.

Jacob forced himself to concentrate on the business at hand.

This is different. This is about dealing with the people who murdered Katie and Aurora and Elsa, and then set fire to them in our house.

Jacob patted the barrel of the Mossberg through his coat with his left hand. He resumed his slow stroll along Midwood Street.

Jacob was about seventy feet away from the parked Mercedes when Yevtushenko stepped out of his doorway. Jacob started hobbling closer towards the car. He unbuttoned his coat. He could feel the pulse pounding in his ears.

Just as Yevtushenko sat down the backseat, two ambulances came screaming down Midwood Street on their way towards the medical center several blocks away. By the time they had passed and Jacob looked back, the big Mercedes was already lumbering away.

Jacob’s brain was buffeted by conflicting waves of frustration and relief. He buttoned his coat back up. It was difficult because his hands were shaking so badly. By the time he got back to his apartment, he had calmed himself down, almost.

This is actually a good thing. You now know what it feels like to almost pull this off. It will make you better prepared for the next time.

Then he threw up in the toilet.

*****

The next time came two days later, on Thursday morning. Jacob was again in position at 6:30 am.

He felt a little better than the first time, less jumpy.

He started his slow shuffle up Midwood Street. He stopped when he got about forty feet from Alexander Yevtushenko’s front door. Slowly, he crossed the street and began walking up the other side, away from number 165. He proceeded about sixty feet and then crossed the street again and began circling back. At his puny walking speed, it took almost seven minutes to complete one circuit. It looked like he was a disabled old man waiting for his uncooperative dog to do her business.

After the third circuit he stopped.

Something’s wrong. Where is everybody?

There was no car, no Yevtushenko, no nothing.

Did they somehow notice me, either from before, or maybe from today?

He dismissed that thought quickly. If Alexander Yevtushenko or his men had noticed something amiss, they would probably have done something about it that was more muscular than just not showing up or running away.

So what is it? It is Thursday, isn’t it?

He looked up and down the block again. It looked oddly quiet and deserted, particularly given that it was now almost 7 am.

And then it hit him. It was Thanksgiving! Fricking Yevtushenko was taking the day off to go and stuff his face with turkey!

Jacob Levine, you are such a schmuck!

He allowed himself a little chuckle as he gave a gentle pull on Jenny’s leash.

“Come on girl. Let’s go and get you a nice turkey dinner.”

*****

The following Tuesday was the last one in November. Jacob was in his usual spot at the usual time. After all the false starts, he felt almost peculiarly relaxed.

Third time lucky….

*****

Fyodor Yevtushenko was sitting in the front passenger seat of the Mercedes. He was chatting casually with Oleg the driver while simultaneously scanning the quiet street ahead. Oleg was an idiot, but he laughed heartily at Fyodor’s tasteless jokes, which made it all tolerable.

As usual, it was pretty empty at this time of day. Intermittently, the odd person would exit their home and head off for work. There was the occasional early-morning jogger. Sometimes, he saw people walking their dogs. Like today.

There was some old guy with a cane walking some type of medium size mutt. He had seen him before. Several times in fact.

The old boy must live in the neighborhood. Shit, if he walks any slower, he would be going backwards.

A few minutes later,Alexander Yevtushenko eased himself into the backseat. Fyodor turned around to him.

“What’s the story today, brother?”

Alexander began rattling off his desired agenda for the morning. He had gone on for less than fifteen seconds when Oleg interrupted.

“Something’s going on with the old man. He’s running at us. Jesus Christ! He’s got a gun!”

As Fyodor spun around to face front, there was a deafening blast mixed with the sound and feel of multiple small metal projectiles impacting metal and windshield. And flesh.

“My eye! He got my eye!”

Involuntarily, Fyodor glanced over at the screaming man. Oleg was holding his hand over his left eye, and there was blood streaming between his fingers. One of the other metal pellets had transected his right carotid artery. Intermittent arterial gushes were spraying wildly over Fyodor and the rest of the car’s interior.

There was another blast. Oleg’s body was blown backwards. A gaping hole had appeared at the top of his chest.

Fyodor was clutching furiously for his gun in the holster under his left arm when the third shot came. He felt a searing pain in his right shoulder. With rising horror, he looked down and saw that he was missing a fist-sized chunk of tissue at the top of his now useless right arm.

There was a brief pause. He never heard the fourth shot.

*****

Jacob had seen Alexander Yevtushenko walk out of his house. By the time he got into the car, Jacob was still a little further away than he would have liked to be. It looked like more than seventy feet, certainly more than the sixty foot distance from the pitcher’s mound to the plate. But this was not baseball.

Jacob let go of Jenny’s leash, and dropped his cane. He had already unbuttoned his coat. He started walking briskly towards the car as he unfastened the Mossberg from its moorings. He broke into a run once he had secured his grip. From releasing the leash, it had taken less than fifteen seconds for him to get to within twenty feet of the front of the car.

His first shot was a little high. It clipped the top of the windscreen in front of the driver. He figured he must have hit something though because he saw blood, lots of blood. He pumped the Mossberg and aimed toward the position of the steering wheel. His second shot was better.

The third shot was aimed at the passenger in the front seat. It seemed a pretty good shot, but it was hard to tell how much damage was inflicted because of all the gore and debris.

He decided to run around to the side of the car for a better look. He also needed to get closer to his ultimate quarry in the backseat.

As he peered through the front side window, he could see that the passenger was severely wounded but still alive. He aimed at the man’s head and fired. Being less than ten feet away, he did not miss.

He turned his attention to the rear seat.

As he did so, a shot rang out, and the right rear tire of the Mercedes exploded.

The little bastard must have somehow crawled out on the other side and is now shooting at me under the car. This means he is probably lying on the ground with his gun arm stretched out in front of him. In that position, it’s easy for him to track me if I run around the front of the car. However, if I run around the back, he has to swing his gun arm up over his head…

As he sprinted to the back of the car, Jacob fired another shot in the general direction of the ground beyond the left rear door of the car.

That’s five.

As he rounded the back of the car, he could see that the left rear door had been opened. He could also see Alexander Yevtushenko lying semi-prone on the street, his right arm arcing back towards Jacob, a semiautomatic pistol in his fist.

Jacob fired first.

Six.

Reflexively, Jacob had fired in the direction of the gun. But he had missed. Sort of. The gun was still in Alexander’s hand. But the gun, hand, and half of Alexander’s forearm were now lying on the ground several feet away. Shrieking with rage, blood pouring from the stump of his right forearm, Alexander began furiously crawling on his knees towards the gun.

Jacob was further away, but he was on his feet. As he ran towards the gun, he took his left hand out of the strap on the underside of the Mossberg and, with his right hand, swung the barrel viciously downward against the back of Alexander’s head. Alexander slumped forward face first onto the asphalt.

Jacob dropped the Mossberg, bent down, and pried the Glock out of Alexander’s dismembered hand. As he walked back, Alexander managed to roll himself over onto his back and peer up at him groggily.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m the one who you told to take the money and shut up seven years ago, the one whose family you murdered.”

Alexander nodded his head in grim recognition. Fiercely, he clenched his teeth.

“Well, fuck you and your family.”

Jacob leveled the Glock at Alexander’s forehead.

“Not this time scumbag.”

Then he pulled the trigger.

*****

Jacob looked up, searching for Jenny. She was sitting on her haunches quietly, almost exactly where he had dropped the leash. He called her, and she trotted over towards him, barely breaking stride to pause and sniff Alexander’s hand lying in the street.

“Good girl. Time to go.”

Jacob picked up Jenny’s lead and started walking east towards Nostrand Avenue three hundred feet away. He walked quickly, but not enough to attract undue attention. He decided to hold onto the Glock in his hand just in case some well-intentioned but misguided neighbor tried to accost him. He wasn’t planning on shooting anybody else, but he figured the gun would scare them away.

No one bothered him.

He turned left on Nostrand, and started heading towards the Sterling Street subway station four blocks north. After traveling about a block, he stopped near a public trashcan and dropped the Glock into it. He looked down and noted blotches of blood, bone, and brain on the front of his coat. He removed his coat and placed it in the trash receptacle over the Glock. As he did this, he observed his hands. They were not shaking.

He was standing in a number two subway car heading north less than ten minutes after firing his first shot. Forty minutes later, he was easing his Subaru into the Bronx River Parkway. Jenny was in the front passenger seat. The 1010 Wins traffic report indicated that the Sawmill River Parkway was pretty clear.

He crossed the border into Canada about eight hours later. Almost immediately, it started to snow. Not a lot, but enough to slow traffic down and enough to make him appreciate the value of Subaru’s symmetric all-wheel-drive system.

It took three days to get to Winnipeg. He parked the Subaru in the parking lot of a Walmart about a mile away from the garage. It took Jenny and him over an hour to walk there. The GMC Sierra started right up – the battery trickle charger had done its work. He drove back to the Subaru and swapped out his belongings into the Sierra.

It took another three days to get to his house in Canmore. It was early December. The whole area looked like a winter wonderland.

*****

Part 4

Two days after Jacob Levine crossed the border into Canada, a group of four law enforcement officials met in a small office in the FBI headquarters building in Washington DC. Three of them were FBI Special Agents - John Hughes, Leslie Chotkowski, and Mark Hansen. The fourth, Joseph Murray, was their supervisor. They were sitting on one side of a circular table facing the far wall on which hung a 55 inch high definition Samsung television monitor. Special Agent Hansen had been put in charge of the investigation, and he was addressing the others.

“After we determined that Alexander Yevtushenko might have been involved with what we believe were the murders of Katie and Aurora Levine and the subsequent arson of their home in Pennsylvania, we obtained a warrant to set up a surveillance operation on his house in Brooklyn. We set up a concealed high definition camera across the street. Actually, two cameras - one was a motion activated telephoto trained on his front door, and the other provided a wide-angle view of the street outside. If the telephoto camera detected any movement at the front door, it activated the wide-angle camera which had digital loop recorder capability. This effectively gave us a fifteen minute window of viewing both before and after any such movement. Although it isn’t particularly relevant in this instance, we also had a high quality directional microphone trained on the front door capable of picking up any conversation there.

“On Tuesday, November 27, the front door motion detector was activated at 6:39 am. This is the recording of what happened between 6:24 and 6:54 am that day.”

Agent Hansen pushed one of the buttons on the remote in his left hand, and the monitor on the wall came to life.

“So here we are at 6:24 am. As you can see, nothing is going on.”

The picture on the screen showed the front door of Alexander Yevtushenko’s house and a fourty foot view of the street outside in both directions. There was no movement. Despite the high definition camera, the picture quality was somewhat grainy due to the low light conditions. Agent Hansen pushed the fast-forward button on the remote for a few seconds, then went back on play.

“Now we are at 6:33. The car that you see pulling up in front of the door is Alexander Yevtushenko’s. The driver is a man by the name of Oleg Karinsky, a second-rate hood who has been Yevtushenko’s driver for over three years. The guy in the passenger seat is Fyodor Yevtushenko, one of Alexander’s younger brothers. He serves as both bodyguard and right-hand man.

“This appears to be a regular pattern for these guys. The two of them come by to pick up Yevtushenko at around this time of the day every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. He typically comes out of his house about five or 10 minutes after they arrive.”

He pressed fast-forward again for a couple of seconds.

“Now watch carefully.”

The timestamp at the bottom of the monitor rolled forward to 6:42 am. The screen showed Alexander Yevtushenko coming out of his front door, ambling over towards the car, opening the door, and easing himself into the backseat.

Agent Hansen pressed the slow motion button on the remote.

At 6:43:12 a figure entered the frame from the left side of the screen. Even at slow speed, the figure seemed to be moving quickly towards the front of the car. It appeared to be an elderly man with a beard wearing a dark wool ski hat and a long dark colored coat. The man was holding a strange looking gun, something like a sawed-off shotgun, and was pointing it at the car.

Agent Hansen paused the tape.

“We recovered the gun from the scene. It’s a 20 gauge Mossberg 590 Shockwave. We think we have a decent chance of getting good prints off of it.”

He pressed play again.

The three men and one woman sitting around the table saw flame come out of the front of the gun and evidence of impact to the top of the windshield and roof of the car on the driver side. Within two seconds, this was followed by a second shot that obliterated the windshield on that side. The old man pivoted slightly toward the passenger side and fired a third shot less than two seconds later which took out that side of the windshield. The man then moved rapidly around to the side of the car, and fired a fourth shot through the passenger side window.

“Look at the back of the car.”

The camera showed that the left rear door of the car had opened while the old man was moving sideways and concentrating on the front seat passenger. They saw Alexander Yevtushenko crawl out of the car onto the ground, gun drawn. They saw him aim and shoot under the car toward the old man, and the explosion of the right rear tire.

They followed as the old man sprinted around the back of the car, firing once as he moved. They saw Alexander Yevtushenko try to swing his gun hand over his head, and then the blast of the Mossberg which blew off Yevtushenko’s hand and forearm. They watched as Yevtushenko and the old man raced each other for the Glock lying on the ground, and the old man club Yevtushenko in the head with the Mossberg. They saw the old man retrieve the Glock and walk back to Yevtushenko who had now rolled over onto his back. There seemed to be some sort of brief conversation between the two men. Then the old guy aimed the Glock and shot Yevtushenko point blank in the head.

The tape kept rolling.

The old guy looked up and seemed to call out to someone. Or something. A few seconds later, a medium-sized dog appeared from the left of the screen. The old man picked up the dog’s lead, and then walked out of the frame to the right. He was still carrying the Glock in his hand.

Agent Hansen pressed stop.

“Jesus. You think this is a hit by a rival group?” It was supervisor Joseph Murray.

“No. If another group wanted to take out three guys at once, they would’ve used another method, like a bomb or something. Or they would have sent more men. The chance of failure is too high with just one guy against three.”

“So what does that leave us with?”

“I think this is more likely a lone wolf who was really pissed off with this guy Yevtushenko for some reason. That actually could be a pretty long list of people.”

“Well, this guy has balls, I’ll give him that. Where do you think he went after?”

“I don’t know, but we are looking into it. This thing clearly took some serious planning. There is no way that this old guy, whoever he is, just happened to be out walking his dog randomly early on a Thursday morning in November hoping for the right time and place to present itself. He must have been watching Yevtushenko for some time. We talked to a few neighbors, and a couple of them did say that they noticed an old man walking his dog on multiple occasions over the past several months.

“Also, this Mossberg gun is very effective at causing serious damage at a short range, but it’s not an easy gun to fire accurately, especially under stress. Which means that this guy must have been practicing for quite a while before he finally made his move.

“And last but not least, the shooter clearly planned the sequence of his attack. First, he takes out the driver which means the car can’t drive off. Then he quickly takes out the front passenger who one would assume is some sort of bodyguard before finally turning his attention to Yevtushenko himself. Pretty slick for an old guy just out walking his dog.”

Agent Hansen paused.

“You seem to be holding something back, agent Hansen.”

“Well, Jacob Levine, the husband and father of the two women who were murdered in Pennsylvania, is about the same size and age of the guy on the tape. Because of the picture quality, and the fact that the guy has a beard and is wearing a hat and a coat, I can’t be sure. The fact that we see him mostly from behind or from the side doesn’t help either. But I did meet Mr. Levine in person. He’s a physician, a cardiologist actually. He struck me as a pretty serious guy. The kind of guy who just might be able to do this sort of thing if sufficiently motivated. He told the Pennsylvania State police that he received a phone call from some guy about a week after we first went to see Yevtushenko regarding his possible involvement. He said the guy never gave his name, but that he spoke with an Eastern European accent. He said the guy basically told him that the murders of his wife and daughter were his fault because he didn’t keep his mouth shut about a car crash seven years ago. Levine said he was absolutely sure the man on the phone was Alexander Yevtushenko. I would say that counts as sufficient motivation.”

Agent Hansen did not reveal that he had also previously told Jacob Levine that Alexander Yevtushenko might well have committed the murders

“So you think this cardiologist with no criminal record other than perhaps a speeding ticket planned this whole thing out and then calmly blew three people away with a shotgun at point-blank range?”

Agent Hansen paused while he considered the question carefully.

“Yes. I think so. Either way, I suspect we’ll know for sure soon enough from the prints on the Mossberg.”

*****

As he had told supervisor Murray, agent Hansen was looking into where the old man might have gone after the shootings. He had visited the scene later that same day. The FBI videotape had clearly shown the suspect initially heading east down Midwood Street towards Nostrand Avenue.

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, New York had installed a vast number of security cameras all over the city. By 2018, there were almost 10,000 cameras in operation. Unfortunately, none of them were near the junction of Midwood Street and Nostrand Avenue.

However, about two blocks south on Nostrand there was an Express Health Mart pharmacy, and about two blocks north was St. Francis of Assisi- St Blaise church. And each of them had several security cameras, some of which were trained on the street.

He obtained the necessary paperwork within twenty-four hours, and began reviewing recordings from the morning of the shootings.

The pharmacy’s cameras were unrevealing. The security system of the church was somewhat antiquated – it only recorded single frame black-and-white pictures every three seconds. But it was enough. According to the electronic timestamp, at 6:47 am that day, a man with a beard wearing a long coat and hat stopped near a trashcan located on the street directly opposite the church. He was walking a medium-sized dog. The next frame showed him dropping an ill-defined object into the trash.

Probably the Glock.

The next few frames showed him removing his coat and placing it in the same trashcan. The man then walked off heading north on Nostrand Avenue, and went out of frame.

We should be able to retrieve the gun and the coat if they haven’t yet picked up the trash. Even if they have, we might still be able to recover them, but it will be messy.

*****

Agent Hansen was walking on Nostrand Avenue just north of the church. Armed with shoulder length rubber gloves, he had just retrieved the Glock and the coat from the trashcan and placed them into separate evidence bags.

Did you have a car parked on Nostrand? Perhaps, but probably not. It could have been vandalized, ticketed, whatever. Too risky and too uncertain for whoever planned this out so carefully. So, what else would you do?

Then he saw the Sterling Street subway station one and a half blocks away. He knew that the city had cameras at each of its more than four hundred subway stations.

Review of the footage from the security cameras showed that the man and his dog had entered the subway at 6:50 am. There was no way to tell for sure whether they had then traveled north or south on the number two line. That said, north was more likely as there were only five stops to the south and about forty-five going north. And at the north end of the line, you were exiting the city.

Agent Hansen began by requesting the security camera records of the ten northernmost subway stations on the number two line.

Tape from the Nereid Avenue station, the penultimate station in the Bronx, showed the same man and dog exiting at 7:57 am on the day of the murders. Agent Hansen visited the station the day after viewing the tape.

This is probably where you picked up your car. Again, you probably didn’t just leave it parked in the street. Which means you most likely had it parked it in a garage. And you probably didn’t walk more than ten blocks from the subway.

There were at least ten garages that fit these parameters, particularly as you got closer to Montefiore Medical Center a few blocks to the south. Using a systematic street grid approach, agent Hansen began visiting each garage. After showing his credentials, he asked them to either produce records of anyone who had rented a long-term spot in the prior year or, better, produce video surveillance data of cars exiting their facility on the morning of November 27.

A medium-size garage called “We Park NY” handed him a disc that showed a gray Subaru Outback Limited pulling out at 7:07 am. The driver had a beard, and a dog could be seen sitting in the passenger seat. There was a clear view of the rear license plate as the car exited the garage.

So, he probably continued traveling by car or, less likely, switched later to a train, plane or boat. If I were him, I would want to leave the country as quickly if possible. If he remained in his car, or even if he switched to a train, it almost certainly means he went to Canada given the geography. Mexico would be a very distant second choice. If he tried to leave the country by either boat or plane, we should know that through DHS and passport control.

Official notifications were sent to the Transportation Security Administration and the passport division of the Department of Homeland Security. There was no evidence that Jacob Levine had boarded an internal flight or had tried to leave the country by either boat or plane. At least not yet.

While agent Hansen was pursuing his part of the investigation, agents Hughes and Chotkowski,were contacting all the real estate agencies that over the prior year had listed properties for sale or rent within a fifteen block radius of 165 Midwood Street. They had already ascertained that Jacob Levine had sold his Manhattan condominium almost six months earlier. It took almost two weeks for them to locate his Brooklyn apartment. All they found in it was a treadmill and some stale dry dog food. Of interest, they were informed that the rent had been paid regularly through an unnamed account at the Overseas Bank in Singapore. When agent Chotkowski contacted the bank, she found them to be both remarkably polite and supremely opaque.

This is why there is no record of this guy using any credit cards. He is using this overseas Singapore bank for his direct debit and cash needs. And the supercilious British wannabes who run the bank are just not going to give us any useful information. Ever.

Three days after the shootings, the FBI crime lab confirmed the presence of Jacob Levine’s fingerprints on the Mossberg. A warrant was issued for his arrest on suspicion of the murders of Alexander Yevtushenko, Fyodor Yevtushenko, and Oleg Karinsky.

Using official channels of communication, agent Hansen notified both the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Mexican Federal Police that the United States government had reason to believe that Jacob Levine, age 64, a man wanted for the murder of three people in New York City, was possibly at large in their country. He was last seen on November 27, 2018 traveling in a metallic gray Subaru Outback Limited with New Jersey plates CZW 91L accompanied by a medium-size dog, most likely a type of spaniel. He attached a copy of Jacob Levine’s most recent passport photograph.

*****

Two weeks after the murders, agent Hansen informed supervisor Murray of the developments in the case.

“I will of course deny I ever said this, but there’s a part of me that hopes we never find him.”

Agent Hansen did not respond. But he heard a voice in his head say: “Me too.”

*****

Three weeks after the shootings, agent Hansen received a phone call from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on the Canadian side of the border at Ogdensburg. Their cameras had picked up Jacob Levine’s gray Subaru when it had entered Canada on the evening of November 27.

With an area of about 3,850,000 square miles, Canada is the second largest country on earth behind Russia. With a population of just over 35 million, it is also one of the most sparsely populated, averaging about nine inhabitants per square mile, a somewhat misleading figure since about eighty per cent of the population resides within just one hundred miles of the United States - Canadian border.

Either way, that’s a shit load of space in which to try to find just one guy. Especially a guy who seems pretty smart, and probably doesn’t want to be found.

Agent Hansen and the FBI were going to need to get lucky.

*****

Four weeks later, they did. Or so it seemed at first.

Agent Hansen received another call from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, this time from Winnipeg. They had found Jacob Levine’s Subaru abandoned in a remote section of a Walmart parking lot in the southeast part of the city. The vehicle was empty.

Agent Hansen asked if the Walmart had security cameras.

The good news was that they did. The bad news was that the cameras that were trained on that section of the parking lot had been out of service for several months. It had not been considered a high priority security issue.

So now there was no way of knowing what had happened to Jacob Levine after he ditched the Subaru. He could be anywhere in that 3.85 million square mile Canadian land mass. And they also did not know what means of transportation he was now using.

Maybe we won’t find you after all, old man. Good for you…

*****

Part 5

When Jacob arrived in Canmore, it was early December, and the town was already in full Christmas spirit. Bright multicolored lights lit up the streets and businesses, and steadily increasing numbers of tourists were beginning to pour in.

Jacob was not in a particularly festive mood. He remained mainly in his house, venturing out only to walk Jenny and pick up necessary supplies and household items. He used the time to grow out a full beard. He thought he looked like one of the band members in ZZ Top. In any event, he felt that it would make him less likely to be recognized.

After the last of the tourists left around mid January, and the town eased back into its more tranquil baseline state, he was able to settle into a more structured routine.

He would wake up at around 7 am, walk the dog around the neighborhood or in the backyard, and then have breakfast. If the weather was dismal, he would exercise for an hour or so in one of the bedrooms that he had stocked with an elliptical machine, a treadmill, a rowing machine, and some weights. While he exercised, he would either watch the news or, more commonly, listen to lectures on various topics that he had downloaded onto his computer from the Great Courses catalog. Sometimes he would just look out the window. He never tired of seeing the mountains. After exercising, he would shower and putter around the house until after lunch when he would typically go out shopping.

If the weather was decent, he would take the dog on a hike. There were almost forty-five miles of hiking trails within the boundaries of Canmore itself, and countless others of varying lengths and degrees of difficulty within easy driving distance, including at Banff just fifteen miles to the north via the Trans Canada Highway. The whole region was an absolute mecca for nature lovers and outdoors sports aficionados.

He experimented with snowshoeing and mountain biking, and also tried river rafting on the Bow River once spring arrived. However, his favorite activity remained a standard hike with Jenny, especially when he would pause for a leisurely backpack lunch while the cleansing majesty of the mountains washed over him.

Weather permitting, in the late afternoon and early evening, he would sit on a comfortable chaise on his large deck at the back of the house and look out at the Three Sisters as he sipped on a large glass of single malt Scotch whiskey.

Dinner alternated between eating out in one of the surprisingly large number of restaurants in the Canmore area and eating at home.

At night, he would watch TV for a couple of hours, and then read a book or some medical journals until he fell asleep.

Which inevitably led to dreams. There were two themes that he seemed to return to with monotonous regularity.

The first type of dream was about Katie and Aurora. They would be nearby, but in another room or around the corner or over a hill. He could see them and sometimes even hear them, but they were always just out of reach. No matter what he did or how hard he tried, whenever he moved toward them, they seemed to move away such that the distance between him and them never diminished.

The second theme was darker and more violent. It involved the killing of multiple nameless, faceless people, usually with guns, but sometimes with swords, or even axes. Typically, Jacob was doing the killing, but sometimes he was the one getting killed. Curiously, Alexander Yevtushenko and his minions never appeared in these savage scenarios.

It was not a wildly exciting life, but, apart from the dreams, it was eminently tolerable. And he was not planning to live in Canmore forever. In fact, his goal was to die in Canmore. Ideally, sitting on his back deck, looking out at the Three Sisters, sipping a large whiskey.

*****

Jacob had stopped his chemotherapy three weeks before he shot Alexander Yevtushenko. He needed to be sure he would not be suffering from any debilitating bouts of fatigue.

Deliberately, he had not made any arrangements to resume therapy afterward. He knew that sooner or later that goddamned melanoma was going to come back for him.

His goal had always been merely to buy himself enough time to be able to die peacefully on his own terms. More specifically, he had no intention of dying in jail.

Prior to leaving New York, he had bought enough fentanyl to comfortably kill an African elephant. The street dealers in Brooklyn had been remarkably accommodating. Subsequently, he had found out he could have even bought what he needed over the internet, used a crypto currency for added anonymity, and have the drugs delivered to his front door via the United State Postal Service!

You just gotta love the internet.

He had also purchased a couple of 100 mL bags of normal saline, intravenous tubing, and some needles from an online medical supply company, and they were sitting next to the fentanyl in a small bag in his bedroom in Canmore. He had been flushing his port-a-cath regularly, and the thing was patent and working just fine.

*****

In early July, shortly after Independence Day, and just over six months after he had settled down in Canmore, he noticed that he was becoming increasingly short of breath during his hikes or home exercise routines. He began gradually scaling back his activity level. A few weeks later, he developed a nagging cough. Initially, it was just a dry hacking nuisance. After a few more weeks, he started to bring up phlegm. It was tinged with blood.

He also noted that he was also waking up in the morning with a dull, generalized headache that required progressively more time and larger doses of ibuprofen to dissipate.

Here we go. The crab is back.

*****

Most of the neighbors on the street where he lived were considerably younger and had children and other obligations that blissfully kept them from interacting with him other than the occasional brief greeting.

However, his immediate neighbor on one side was a widow in her early seventies. She was one of those relentlessly cheerful and affable souls who genuinely seem to care about people. She was always trying to mother him. She was always asking him if he had enough to eat, how he was feeling, did he need anything, was he keeping warm enough. She even offered to do his laundry.

But her most persistent request by far was an invitation to dinner at her house. Maybe because he was feeling increasingly fatigued, or maybe because she just eventually wore him down, he finally acquiesced. It was now late August.

He arrived at her door at the mutually agreed-to time and date, and she fussily ushered him into her living room. There was a man sitting in one of the armchairs nursing a cocktail. He looked to be in his late thirties or early forties, clean shaven, in good physical shape, friendly. As Jacob entered the room, he got up, smiled, and extended his hand.

“Jacob hello, this is my son Eric. He’s a sergeant with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He’s stationed in Calgary, but he visits me quite regularly. He happened to drop by today, and I thought it would be just lovely if he could join us for dinner. I’m sure you won’t mind. He’s very nice.”

Jacob shook Eric’s hand.

This is going to be a long evening.

*****

When Eric Porter got back to his office in the Calgary RCMP station the following Monday, he began going through the various notices and emails that had come in over the weekend.

One was from the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. It was a follow-up to a previous notice that had been sent about six months earlier. It said that the FBI were still looking for a man by the name of Jacob Levine. He was wanted for the murder of three men who were themselves criminals. He was now sixty-five years old, and they had reason to believe that he was located somewhere in Canada. A five year old grainy passport picture of the suspect was attached.

None of this particularly registered with Sergeant Porter. The man in the picture did not look familiar. Then he read the final sentence of the FBI notice. “We believe the suspect may be traveling with a medium-size spaniel type dog.”

His mother’s neighbor had left relatively early after dinner the previous Saturday. He said he had to walk his dog. When Sergeant Porter had left his mother’s house about twenty minutes later to travel back to Calgary, he had in fact passed the neighbor walking his dog on the street. The dog was a medium-size spaniel mutt.

Then he remembered that his Mom had referred to the neighbor as “Jacob”.

Sergeant Porter began writing an email to the contact person listed on the FBI notice. It was Special Agent Hansen.

*****

Two days later, someone rang Jacob’s front doorbell while he was sitting on his back porch observing the sun as it descended into its fiery grave beyond the mountains. He approached the door and looked through the spy hole.

It’s god damn Joe Friday!

Jacob wasn’t sure exactly how the FBI had found him, but he was pretty sure it had something to do with his meeting Sergeant Porter at his neighbor’s house a couple of days earlier.

For one mad second he contemplated fleeing.

He opened the door.

“Special Agent Hansen. You’re a long way from home. Why don’t you come in?”

Agent Hansen had taken a plane from Newark to Calgary earlier that day and then driven to Canmore in a rented Ford that was parked across the street. After asking and being granted permission to interview the man suspected of being Jacob Levine, he had been asked by Sergeant Porter if he would require police backup. Agent Hansen had politely declined. “If it really is Jacob Levine, he’s not going to put up a fight. I believe he has already done all the fighting he plans on doing. And if it isn’t Jacob Levine, the issue is moot.”

The face that stared back at agent Hansen was not the one he had remembered. It wasn’t just the scraggy mountain man beard. The man looked gaunt, haggard, and the light of life appeared to be fading from his eyes.

“I’m just having a little drink out back. Would you care to join me.”

Agent Hansen demurred as he followed Jacob out onto the rear porch. There was something about the way the older man walked that reminded him of his own father when he would come to visit him in the hospice where he was dying slowly and miserably of pancreatic cancer.

“Wow, that’s quite a you view you’ve got here Mr. Levine.”

“Yes it is. I find it very soothing.”

Agent Hansen’s trained eyes glanced quickly around. The only pieces of furniture on the deck were a chaise, an outdoor armchair, a tall standing outdoor lamp, and a small table between the chaise in the armchair. On the table was a bottle of expensive scotch whiskey and a generously filled glass without any ice. The table was also littered with multiple crumpled up white paper tissues. Even in the gathering twilight, their bloodstains were clearly visible.

There was also a small black bag on the floor at the base of the lamp. The bag was half open, and he could see that it contained several items, including a length of thin plastic tubing.

“What can I do for you agent Hansen?”

“We have videotape evidence of you shooting Alexander Yevtushenko, his younger brother Fyodor, and his driver Oleg Karinsky. We recovered your fingerprints from a weapon that was left at the scene. Actually two weapons – a Mossberg 590 Shockwave and a Glock 19 that was in fact Alexander’s gun originally, but which you used to shoot him in the head.”

Agent Hansen paused to allow the information to sink in.

“If I may ask, how did you locate me?”

Agent Hansen gave him a thumbnail version. The FBI videos from Midwood Street; the church video from Nostrand Avenue; the subway videos; the pictures from the garage in the Bronx; the border crossing at Ogdensburg; the discovery of the Subaru in Winnipeg.

“The trail did go cold for quite a few months after that. Then we received a call from Sergeant Porter who I believe you met a couple of days ago. He actually recognized you from the description of your dog.”

“Ah, Jenny. Here she is now. Come here girl.”

Jenny had walked onto the deck and was sniffing peacefully at agent Hansen’s shoes. Jenny sauntered over to Jacob who rubbed her ears softly as he quipped: “Who knew that it wasn’t “cherchez la femme’. It was actually ‘cherchez la chienne’.”

“Well, we have a bit of a situation here agent Hansen, because I have no intention of going back to the United States with you and spending the rest of my life in jail.”

Jacob noticed that agent Hansen was looking at him oddly.

“Is something the matter agent Hansen? If you don’t mind me saying so, you look a little strange.”

“You just remind me of somebody I knew long ago, that’s all.”

Agent Hansen took another long, slow look around the deck. For a few seconds, he was lost in thought.

“I’ll tell you what Mr. Levine. I don’t want any trouble. I’m going to go and drive around for a while. Then I’m going to come back. I hope you change your mind by then.”

It was Jacob’s turn to pause. He had tracked agent Hansen’s panoramic gaze around the deck.

“Thank you, agent Hansen. There is one more thing. My dog Jenny. She really is a lovely dog. I would like to know that you will help her find a nice home.”

Jenny had meanwhile walked back to agent Hansen who was now scratching her softly under her chin.

“Don’t worry Mr. Levine. I’ll take care of it.”

*****

After agent Hansen left, Jacob picked up his drink, walked over to the deck railing, and leaned on it.

The bases of the mountains were painted with delicately varied verdant hues which then gradually ceded control to the starker rock and snow above the tree line. He took a long swig, and shuddered slightly as the liquor trickled down his esophagus and hit his gastric lining.

God that Balvenie Double Wood is good stuff.

Jenny was padding contentedly up and down the deck watching him. He kissed the top of her head and inhaled her scent deeply into his lungs.

Seems about as good a time and place as any.

He moved back toward the chaise, sat down, and started rummaging around in the black bag. He was looking for the hundred milliliter saline bag that he had labeled, the one in which he had placed all of the fentanyl. After locating it, he connected the bag to the input end of the intravenous tubing, and a large bore sterile needle to the output. He fiddled with the flow adjuster such that the entire length of tubing filled up with liquid, and just a few drops came out of the needle and spilled onto the floor.

I don’t think we’re going to need to worry about sterile technique this time.

He inserted the needle into his port-a-cath, and lay down on the chaise facing the mountains. He reached up with his right hand and opened up the flow.

He closed his eyes…

He could see Katie and Aurora. They seemed closer than in his previous dreams. There was a third figure with them. It was Eli!

They started waving, beckoning him.

Jacob started moving towards them. This time, they did not recede.

Epilogue

After leaving Jacob Levine’s house in Canmore, agent Hansen called Sergeant Porter in his office in Calgary.

“I went to see the guy you told me about, your mom’s neighbor. I don’t believe he’s the guy we’re looking for. He’s the right age and all, he has a similar dog, and his first name is Jacob, but it’s not the guy I interviewed back in the United States. He allowed me to take some fingerprints which we will run just to confirm, but I’m pretty sure it’s not him.

“You may want to go and have somebody look in on the old guy however, and pretty soon too. He looked pretty sick to me, like he could keel over and die at any moment.”

Sergeant Porter knew that agent Hansen was lying. He just didn’t know why. He had made his own inquiries using the resources of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and it was pretty evident to him that his mother’s neighbor was in fact Jacob Levine.

Things became clearer for Sergeant Porter after he visited Jacob’s house the following day.

*****

Agent Hansen was about to sit down on a secluded bench in Constitution Gardens in Washington DC. Already sitting on the bench was a man of about the same age and build.

“Hi, James. Thanks for agreeing to meet with me.”

“No problem. Who’s your friend?”

“Oh, that’s Jenny. Her previous owner couldn’t take care of her anymore. She’s a great dog.”

James Noble had been agent Hansen’s friend and classmate at the FBI Training Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Hansen had stayed on with the Bureau, but Noble had been recruited by the National Security Agency. Hansen was not exactly sure what Noble did, but he knew that it involved bad guys getting suddenly dead.

“So James, I’ve been thinking about something that I’d like to run past you.”

“Sure thing. Go for it”

“Well, there are a lot of people out there who, for various reasons, feel that they have nothing left to live for, nothing more to lose. Particularly older people who’ve lost their entire family to accidents, disease, or crime, and who themselves may have some life-threatening medical condition. Some of these people probably have interesting backgrounds, like law enforcement, the military, even doctors. It should be pretty easy to compile a list of these types of people, particularly with the right resources.

“I’m pretty sure that, given the right sort of direction and incentive, a decent percentage of these people could be convinced to do things that folks in your line of work might find useful. What do you think?”

James Noble was softly stroking Jenny’s back while he listened.

People with nothing more to lose. You know, you just might be on to something…

END