we were going to get a nice, neat home address. Dumb ass!’ Will realized Tom was addressing no one but himself.
‘Where is this internet café?’
‘Does it matter? New York is a pretty big fucking city, Will. Millions of people could have passed through there.’
‘Tom.’ Sternly now. ‘Can you find out where it is?’
Tom returned to the screen, while Will stared. Finally, he spoke.
‘There’s the address. Trouble is, I’m not sure I believe it.’
‘Where is it?’ said Will.
Tom looked him straight in the face for the first time since Will had shown him the kidnappers’ email. ‘It’s from Brooklyn. Crown Heights, Brooklyn.’
‘That’s fairly near here. Why don’t you believe it?’
‘Look at the map.’ Tom had done an instant MapQuest search, showing with a red star the exact location of the internet café. It was on Eastern Parkway. ‘Do you realize where that is?’
‘No. Come on, Tom. Stop fucking around. Tell me.’
‘This message was sent from Crown Heights. That’s only the biggest Hassidic community in America.’
The red star stared at them without blinking. It looked like the X on a treasure map, the kind that used to feature in Will’s boyhood dreams. What lay under it?
‘Despite the location, it’s possible that it’s not them who sent it.’
‘Tom, the email was in Hebrew, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Yeah, but that could be a cover. The real name was golem.net.’
‘Look it up.’
Tom keyed golem into Google and clicked on the first result. It brought up a page from a website of Jewish legends for children. It told the story of the Great Rabbi Loew of Prague, who used a spell from kabbala, ancient Jewish mysticism, to mould a man from clay: a vast, lumbering giant they called the Golem. Will’s eye raced to the end: the story climaxed in violence and destruction, with the Golem running amok. The Golem seemed to be a Hassidic precursor of Frankenstein’s monster.
‘All right,’ said Tom finally. ‘I admit it, it does seem to be them. But it makes no sense. Why on earth would these people take Beth?’
‘We don’t know it’s “these people”. It might be one psycho who just happens to be Hassidic.’ Will grabbed his coat.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going there.’
‘Are you crazy?’
‘I’ll pretend I’m reporting. I’ll start asking questions. See who’s in charge.’
‘You’re out of your mind. Why don’t you just tell the police you’ve traced the email? Let them handle it.’
‘What, and guarantee these lunatics kill Beth? I’m going.’
‘You can’t just go charging in there, with your notebook and English accent. You might as well wear a fucking sign.’
‘I’ll think of something.’ Will did not say, though he thought it, that he was getting quite good at this kind of amateur detective work. His triumphs in Brownsville and Montana had left him pumped: in both cases he had found out a hidden truth. Now he would find his wife.
Friday, 4.10pm, Crown Heights, Brooklyn
His first reaction was confusion. He got off the subway at Sterling Street and walked straight into what looked to him like a black neighbourhood: Ebony, Vibe and Black Hair on sale at the newsstand, murals on every other wall, knots of young black men standing around in baggy combat clothes.
But once he crossed New York Avenue, he felt his pulse quicken with a reporter’s sense that he was getting nearer to the story. Signs appeared in Hebrew. Some of the words were written in English characters, though their meaning was no less opaque. Chazak V’Ematz! promised one, enigmatically. Another word appeared several times, on bumper stickers, on fly posters, even on notices collared to lampposts, like flyers seeking lost cats. Will soon learned to recognize the word, though he had no idea how to pronounce it: Moshiach.
Next he passed a black man the size of a large refrigerator, with a little girl in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Will’s confusion returned. He was now on Empire Boulevard, noticing Indian restaurants and vans decked out in the national flag of Trinidad and Tobago. Was he in the Hassidic neighbourhood or wasn’t he?
He turned off, into residential streets. The houses were large brownstones or made of a firm, red brick, as if once, in a long-ago Brooklyn, they had been positively posh. Each had a few steps up to the front door, which sat alongside a porch. In other American homes, Will guessed, these porches might feature a swing chair, perhaps a few lanterns, certainly a pumpkin at Hallowe’en and, very often, the Stars and Stripes. In Crown Heights they looked mainly unused, though even here Will spotted that word again – Moshiach – on window stickers, and once on a yellow flag with the image of a crown, which Will took to be some kind of local symbol.
Directly above each porch, one storey up, was a veranda, complete with wooden balustrade. Will thought of Beth, held behind one of these front doors: his legs suddenly tensed with the urge to run up the stairs of each house and knock down door after door, until he had found his wife.
Coming towards him was a group of teenage girls in long skirts, pushing strollers. Behind them were perhaps a dozen, maybe more, children. Will could not tell if these girls were older sisters or exceptionally young mothers. They looked like no women he had ever seen before, certainly not in New York. They seemed to be from a different era, the 1950s perhaps or the reign of Queen Victoria. No flesh was exposed, the sleeves of their white, prim blouses covered their arms; their skirts fell to their ankles. And their hair: the older women seemed to wear it in a preternaturally neat bob, one that barely moved in the wind.
Will did not look too hard; he did not want anyone to think he was staring. Besides, he no longer needed confirmation. This was Hassidic Crown Heights, all right. As he walked, he honed his cover story. He would say he was a writer for New York magazine doing a piece for its new ‘Slice of the Apple’ slot, in which outsiders wrote dispatches from different segments of New York’s wonderfully diverse community, blah, blah. He would pose as the safari-suit explorer, sent to note down the curious ways of the natives.
And this was certainly an alien landscape. Will searched desperately for something that might give him a handle – an office perhaps, where he might discover who ran this place. Maybe he could explain what had happened and they would help him. He just needed a foothold, something in this strange place he at least understood.
But there was nothing. Every bumper sticker seemed to convey a message that might be worth decoding, but was indecipherable. Light Sabbath candles and you’ll light up the world! There was an ad for a show: Ready for Redemption. Even the shops seemed to be part of this religious fervour. The Kol Tov supermarket carried a slogan: It’s all good.
He kept walking, stopping at a store front whose window was full of notices rather than goods. One leapt out at him straightaway.
Crown Heights is the neighbourhood of the Rebbe. Out of respect to the Rebbe and his community we request that all women and girls, whether living here or visiting, adhere at all times to the laws of modesty, including:
Closed neckline in back, side and front. (Collarbone should remain covered)
Elbows covered in all positions
Knees covered by dress/skirt in all positions