LITMIR.BIZ

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all over the world. What happened tonight is that I came this close to witnessing one of those killings. If the Hassidim’s theory is right, the man who was murdered tonight will be a so-called righteous man. Which is why I wanted you to see this.’

      He took his BlackBerry out of the police zip-loc bag, clicked on the internet browser and selected Google. Then he punched in the words ‘Bitensky and Lower East Side’.

      Google was searching, not fast on this handheld machine. Finally, a page of search results. A biomedical website, something about a classical pianist. And then a link to Downtown Express, ‘the weekly newspaper of lower Manhattan’. He clicked on it, waited an age for the page to load and then scrolled down. It was an archive item from a couple of years ago. He prayed for it to be something of substance, something which might prove to Monroe Sr that his son was not completely deranged.

       Residents of the Greenstreet area endured a chilly start to the Passover season this week, when their apartment building was evacuated for a fire alert Tuesday.

       It was after midnight when scores of residents filed together into the park, as fire crews examined the building before declaring it was safe to re-enter.

       While most folks were clothed only in pyjamas and robes, one group were fully dressed – since they had been taking part in the traditional seder that often continues until the early hours.

       They were guests of Judah Bitensky, one of the the last Jewish residents of a building that was once a hub for the East Broadway Jewish community. It appears that Mr Bitensky, janitor at one of the area’s remaining synagogues, hosts an annual seder meal at his home – inviting all those who have no other home to go to.

       ‘It’s kind of a tradition,’ said Irving Tannenbaum, 66 and a regular. ‘Every year Judah opens his door to people like us. Some of the crowd are elderly and live alone. Some are, you know, street people. It’s quite a scene in there.’

       Rivvy Gold, 51 and homeless, added, ‘It’s the best meal I get all year. This is the one night I feel like I have family.’

      Downtown Express counted twenty-six people heading back into Mr Bitensky’s tiny apartment – including three in wheelchairs and two on crutches. Reluctant to give an interview to a reporter, Mr Bitensky was asked how he was able to feed so many, despite living on a meager income himself. ‘Somehow I manage,’ he said. ‘I don’t quite know how.’

FIFTY-SIX

       Monday, 2.25pm, Brooklyn

      Will maintained his perch by the window, regularly peeling back the curtain to look out onto the street. He knew it was foolhardy. If anyone was following him, there could hardly be a better way to attract their attention. He flapped the material back and forth so often, he looked as if he were sending a coded message.

      He had said goodbye to his father only minutes after they had met up. Monroe Sr had looked at him blankly when Will called up the Bitensky story on the BlackBerry, as if the whole business was just too deranged to take seriously. He had made a gesture with his face and hands – let’s put all this nonsense aside – and asked Will to come back home with him. There he would have a chance to shower, sleep and generally calm down. Linda would look after him. For his own part, he had an important case to prepare for that morning, but he would be back in the evening. Then father and son could put their heads together and work out how they were going to get Beth back. It was a tempting offer, but Will declined. He had wasted enough time already. With thanks he sent his father back to his car – and fired off a text message to TC.

      To his great relief she called back. She had been released at nine that morning. Police had just viewed the CCTV tapes from her building. The footage from Saturday night included a sequence shot by the camera above the back entrance: it showed Pugachov helping TC and an unnamed man into a large bin and wheeling them out of sight. It then showed him re-entering the building a few minutes later. Not only did it confirm the admittedly strange story she had told detectives – it also showed that when TC had left Mr Pugachov, he was alive and well.

      There was something in the dead man’s trousers which helped, too. In his right pocket was the spare key for TC’s apartment. He would surely only have needed to use that if she was not in and the door had been locked. With that second alibi, the police released TC. They even thanked her for her time – doubtless, thought Will, with a scripted paragraph from the NYPD customer care manual.

      It was Will’s idea to meet at Tom’s, in what was a straightforward calculation. Both his and TC’s apartments had been monitored; here, they had at least a chance to meet undetected.

      Besides, TC had a plan – just a hunch, she said – that required major computing brainpower. Now she was standing over Tom’s shoulder as he stabbed at the keyboard.

      ‘So you’re certain of the domain name?’ he was saying.

      ‘All I can tell you is what it says on the card I took. [email protected].’

      ‘OK, OK, that’s what I’ll try. Spell Mosh—, you know, for me again?’

      ‘For the third time: M-O-S-H-I-A-C-H.’

      Will glanced back out of the window. As much as Tom loved Beth, he could not stand TC. At Columbia Will had always put it down to jealousy, the difficulties of being a three. Now he reckoned it was more like organic combustion: Tom and TC were phosphorus and sulphur. They could not meet without sparking up.

      In a novel form of coping strategy, Tom chose not to talk to TC at all. He talked to himself instead.

      ‘OK, so what we need to do is run a host domain name.’ He punched those last three words into the ‘shell’, a kind of empty window on the screen he had created. A few seconds later, a string of numbers appeared: 192.0.2.233.

      ‘All right, who is 192.0.2.233?’ He said the words as he typed them.

      Back came an answer. Among a whole lot of blurb about ‘registrants’ and ‘administrative contacts’ was the address of the Hassidim’s headquarters in Crown Heights. The very building Will and TC had been in last night.

      ‘Good, now let’s talk to Arin.’

      ‘Arin? Who the hell is Arin?’

      ‘ARIN is the American Registry for Internet Numbers, the organization which allocates IP addresses – you know, the string of numbers we had before.’

      ‘But I thought you already had that for this, you know, domain.’

      ‘I had one of the numbers. ARIN will give us all the numbers allocated to this company or organization. We will have the number for every machine they have. Once we have that, we can get to work.’

      Soon the screen was filled with numbers, dozens of them. This, TC realized, was the entire Hassidic computer network, expressed in numerical form.

      ‘All right, this is the range we’ll scan.’

      ‘What does that mean, “scan”?’

      ‘I thought you didn’t want me to get too technical. “Save the geek stuff, Tom.” Remember?’

      ‘So what do we do now?’

      ‘We wait.’

      TC headed for the couch, laying herself flat out, using Tom’s overcoat as a blanket, before falling into exhausted sleep. Tom was working away on a different computer, hammering at the keys. Will alternated between staring out of the window and at a photograph on the wall: a picture of himself, Tom and Beth, wrapped up in thick winter gloves, scarves and coats in what looked like a ski resort. In fact it was the centre of Manhattan, early on a Sunday morning after a night-long blizzard. The smile on Beth’s face seemed to register something more than laughter: there was, what was the word, appreciation, for the fact that life, despite everything, could

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