The Yiddish Policeman's Bureau by Michael Chabon
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EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
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This is an excerpt from the Yiddish Policeman's Bureau by Michael Chabon. Read for YOU by Benjamin Walker Nine months Land Zeman's been flopping at the Hotel Zaman off without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered. Now somebody has put a bullet in the brain of the occupant of 20 wait a year. Who was calling himself Emmanuel Laska? He didn't answer the phone. He wouldn't open his door, says 10 and blame the night manager when he comes to roust Lanzmann. Landman lives in 505 with a view of the neon sign on the hotel across Macs Nordhaus Street. That one is called the Blackpool A word, figures and land. Zeman's nightmares. I had to let myself into his room. The night manager is a former U. S. Marine who kicked a heroin habit of his own back in the sixties after coming home from the shambles of the Cuban war. He takes the motherly interest in the user population of the salmon off. He extends them credit and sees to it that they're left alone when that is what they need. Did you touch anything in the womb? Landesman says. Tenenbaum says on Lee the cash and the jewelry Landesman puts on his trousers and shoes and hitches up his suspenders. Then he and 10 and Boy Am turned to look at the door knob were necktie, hangs red with a fat maroon stripe already nodded to save time. Lanzmann has eight hours to go until his next shift ate rat hours. Sucking at his bottle in his glass tank lined with wood shavings, Landesman size and goes for the tie. He slides it over his head and pushes up the not to his collar. He puts on his jacket, feels for the wallet and shield in the breast pocket, pats the sholem he wears in a holster under his arm, a chopped Smith and Wesson model 39. I hate the wake, you, Detective Tenenbaum says Onley. I noticed that you don't really sleep. I sleep. Landman says he picks up the shot glass that he's currently dating, a souvenir of the World's fair in 1977. I just do it in my underpants and shirt. He lifts the glass and toast the 30 years gone since the Sitko World's Fair, a pinnacle of Jewish civilization in the north people say. And who is he to argue? My Landesman was 14 that summer and just discovering the glories of Jewish women, for whom 1977 must have been some sort of pinnacle. Sitting up in a chair, he drains the glass wearing a sholem, according to doctors, therapists and his ex wife, Lanzmann drinks to medicate himself, tuning the tubes and crystals of his moods with a crude hammer of 100 proof plum brandy. But the truth is that Lanzmann has only two moods. Working and dead. Meyer Landsman is the most decorated shameless in the district of Sitka, the man who solved the murder of the beautiful froma Lefkowitz by her farrier husband and caught Podolski, the hospital killer. His testimony sent Hyman Charney to federal prison for life, the first and last time the criminal charges against verbal or wise guy I have ever been made to stick. He has the memory of a convict, the balls of a fireman and the eyesight of a house breaker. When there's crime to fight, Landesman tears around Sitka like a man with his pant leg caught on a rocket. It's like there's a film score playing behind him, heavy on the castanets. The problem comes in the hours when he isn't working. When his thoughts start blowing up the open window of his brain like pages from a blotter, Sometimes it takes a heavy paperweight to pin them down. I hate to make more work for you, Tenenbaum says. During his days working narcotics, Landesman arrested 10 and blind five times. That is all the basis for what passes for friendship between them. It is almost enough. It's not work done and by, Landesman says, I do it for love. It's the same for me, the night manager says. With being a night manager of a crap *** hotel. Landesman puts his hand on 10 and Boim shoulder, and they go down to take stock of the deceased, squeezing into Zaman Hoffs loan elevator or elevate Toro as a small brass plate over the door would have it. When the hotel was built 50 years ago, all of its directional signs, labels, notices and warnings were printed on brass plates in Esperon toe. Most of them are long gone, victims of neglect, vandalism or the fire code, the door and doorframe on 208 do not exhibit signs of forced entry. Landesman covers the knob with his handkerchief and nudges the door open with the toe of his loafer. I got this funny feeling, Tenenbaum says as he follows Landesman into the room. First time I ever saw this guy, you know the expression. A broken man. Landesman allows that phrase to ring a bell. Most of the time it gets applied to people who don't really deserve it, Tenenbaum says. Most men, in my opinion, have nothing there to break in the first place. But this Alaska. He was like one of those sticks. You snap, it lights up, you know, for a few hours and then you can hear broken glass rattling inside it. I don't know, forget it. It was just the funny feeling. Everybody has funny feelings these days, Landesman says, making a few notes in his little black pad about the situation of the room, even though such notes or superfluous because he rarely forgets a detail of physical description. Landman has been told by the same loose confederacy of physicians, psychologists and his former spouse that alcohol will kill his gift for recollection. But so far to his regret, this claim is proved false. His vision of the past remains unimpaired. We had to open a separate phone line. Just a handle. The calls. These are strange times to be a Jew 10 and blame agrees, no doubt about it.