Clean Hands by Patrick Hoffman

Author:Patrick Hoffman [Hoffman, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780802129543
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2020-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

A sailboat somewhere on Long Island Sound.

The water was as still as a lake, not a single ripple, and Avi Lessing, squinting at the water, was trying to make sense of that. Why wasn’t it moving? How could it possibly be this still? There was a saying that addressed that kind of question, but he couldn’t remember it.

Anyway, it was a bright sunny day, and he turned and looked toward the bow of the ship and saw his mother and father standing there with paper plates in their hands. A small circle of strangers, also holding paper plates and talking quietly, stood around them. Avi was just starting to step toward the group when everything in his vicinity—the boat, the water, his parents, the strangers, the blue sky—got sucked up like a napkin and pulled through a tiny hole below his feet until all that remained was blackness.

When Avi opened his eyes, he found himself looking at the parquet floor in his living room. His ears were ringing. He could see dust motes and individual hairs on the floor. His mind was fogged, and his chin and knees hurt. There was a mineral taste in his mouth—blood; he moved his tongue around to check his teeth. He tried to raise his hand to his mouth, but it was stuck. He realized his hands were bound behind him.

What the hell was he doing on the floor? He turned on his side, looked up and saw a woman seated about five feet away. She had dark hair and she was dressed like a businesswoman, wearing a black pantsuit with a white shirt. She wore bright red lipstick. She was staring down at him with a flat expression on her face, and Avi, for a moment, had the distinct impression that she was a doctor.

A car honked outside, and everything clicked into place. He recognized her as the woman who’d come by the phone shop. Oh shit, he thought. He rocked back and forth and tried to pull his hands free, but they were strapped tight. “I gave you the phone!” he finally said.

The woman’s legs were crossed; she had on high heels. Her hands were folded in her lap. Her head moved about an inch and her eyes narrowed. She leaned toward him like she hadn’t heard what he’d said.

“I gave you the phone,” he repeated. In his mind, he ran through a list of people to blame, landing eventually on Yuri Rabinowitz.

He was just beginning to shift the blame to the Africans when a fresh wave of pain in his chin distracted him. “I didn’t do anything,” he said. “They brought it to me. What? I’ll tell you who it was. The guys that sold me the phone, I’ll show you them. I’ll take you to them.”

Right then two things occurred to Avi Lessing: First, he noticed that he was missing his glasses. The second thought came on the heels of the first—Mommy is going to fucking kill me for this one.

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