the past too-perfect, deployed by those consumed with nostalgia. The pressure caused by gift-giving, particularly pronounced at Christmas, was, inevitably, present tension. We must have been so obnoxious, thought Will now, re-constructing in his mind the world of smart-aleck, private jokes that he and TC had once inhabited together.
‘Well, that makes this even more intriguing,’ TC said, letting Will off despite his error. ‘It’s not a reply. It’s a second message, sent voluntarily. It suggests Yosef Yitzhok felt a degree of urgency: two messages in one morning.’
‘The first one could have been last night. But, OK. Why would this be urgent?
‘I don’t know.’ TC’s voice had dropped; she was distracted. She had grabbed Will’s phone back and was staring at it, taking occasional slurps from her chocolate shake without once breaking her gaze. She broke from the meditation only to murmur, ‘He was in a hurry.’ She began tapping the keypad, then scribbling, then tapping again. A small smile of satisfaction, followed by a crinkled brow.
There. She shoved the sheet of paper across the table.
TWO DOWN. MORE’S TO COME.
They both stared in silence, the pleasure derived from the act of decoding now giving way to the pain of further bemusement.
‘He’s playing games with us,’ said Will. ‘“Right, you’ve deciphered two of my messages; I’ll send more”. So long as we do . . . what?’
‘We need to let him know we understand, but we need more information. We don’t want to piss him off. If he’s trying to help, we need to keep him happy. Send a message back.’
Will took the phone, glancing up at TC with eyes that said, ‘I hope you’re right about this.’
Thank you. I won’t stop. And I want to hear more. Can you tell me anything? Please.
All they could do now was wait. TC was convinced that McDonalds made a sufficiently anonymous hiding place. Will suspected there was another motive: TC did not want Will in her home.
But they had to wait somewhere. If the Hassidim were not going to reply till sundown, or when the three stars appeared, or whatever way these jokers had of telling the time, there was nothing else to do – save waiting for Yosef Yitzhok to give them another tantalizing, veiled message.
It came nearly an hour later, at first sight as nonsensical as the others.
Wet nose debugs room
This time Will pressed the buttons, jotting the results instantly onto his pad. By the time he got to the third word he felt his stomach churn. TC was craning to look and once she saw the notepad, she gasped.
Yet more deaths soon
Saturday, 12.30pm, Manhattan
Everyone was either staring at them directly or pretending not to look. TC was attempting to calm Will who had just pounded the table and then thrown a cup of coffee at the wall. A cleaner had appeared with a mop.
‘We’ve got to try and think straight,’ TC was saying.
‘How can I think straight? It’s a fucking death threat.’
‘He might be trying to warn us.’
‘Warn us? He’s saying they’re going to kill Beth.’ Will looked up, his eyes red.
The phone buzzed again. TC grabbed it first, before Will had a chance. For the first time, a straight sentence.
He who hesitates is lost
TC looked at it for only a second, before trying out the text alternative. It made no sense. No, she concluded, this was a different kind of clue. Maybe it was not even a clue. Perhaps it was merely a warning. Hurry, there is no time to waste. She turned the display to Will for his inspection. It somehow calmed him: there was no direct menace here. It sounded more like a call to action.
TC peered at it a while, then wrote it down on the top page of her sketchpad, just below the first three messages. Will saw that she had neatly written the first, coded version on the left and then the second, deciphered one on the right. For an instant, Will imagined TC at school: the kind of girl who always kept a clean, well-stocked pencil case.
While TC chewed her pen and did her best to stare the latest riddle into submission, Will tried to while away the afternoon. He picked at junk food, bit his nails, drummed his fingers on the table; tried reading the paper but could not concentrate. He could hear a couple arguing. ‘I don’t believe you,’ the woman was saying to the man. The instant he heard the words, he sat bolt upright, remembering that night in the Carnegie Deli. Beth had said a beautiful sentence to him without irony, even if he had tried to pierce the moment with a joke. ‘I believe in you and me,’ she had said. He suddenly wished he had repeated the words back to Beth. For it was true. She was his faith.
The cell phone beeped.
He that knows nothing doubts nothing
This time Will read it out loud. He knew the answer to his next question, but he asked it anyway: ‘Did you work out the first one, “He who hesitates is lost”?’
‘Not yet. He that knows nothing doubts nothing. What could that mean?’ TC was pencilling the words down, in the corner of a page already marked with drawings.
‘I don’t get it,’ Will said, chiefly for the sake of saying something. ‘It’s a contradiction. In the first message, he’s telling us not to hesitate. Just to get on with it. Now he’s saying that it’s good to doubt. You know, only a moron doesn’t experience doubt.’
‘Doubting’s not the same as hesitating.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘I don’t fucking know. I’m trying to think. He wants to tell us something. You know, “move it”. Or “think things through”. I don’t know. But he sounds like he wants to help.’
‘No. If he was trying to help he wouldn’t be talking in fucking riddles.’ Another beep.
Opportunity seldom knocks twice
As soon as Will read it out, TC began murmuring. ‘Twice is interesting. Perhaps he’s telling us to multiply something. Maybe we’re looking at this all wrong. Maybe he wants us to look at the letters as numbers!’
‘What?’
‘You know, like the way text messages work, only reversed. They’re letters and words formed from numbers. Maybe this is the reverse. We’re meant to take the letters and think of them as numbers.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Well, one thing could be to count the number of letters in each clue. That number could be significant. Or perhaps each letter has a numeric value. You know, A is one, B is two.’
Will was baffled, but TC was ignoring him. She was scribbling away frantically on her sketchpad, wildly computing one sum after another.
More beeping; perhaps a minute after the previous one.
A friend in need is a friend indeed
Will was becoming more irritated with each message. If this was help, why did it have to be so damned opaque? Will felt like shaking young Yosef Yitzhok by his lapels: If you want to help, then just help! ‘What is this, Cliché Night? A friend in need is a friend indeed. What the hell is that? How on earth does he expect us to solve these so fast?’
‘Look, cool down, Will. Right now this is all we have. He’s all we have. Maybe he’s suddenly in a place where he can text without being seen; he might want to get all his messages out while he can.’
It was plausible; Will bit his lip. He did not want to set off a whole row with TC now, not while she was