Act of God

burned in 1872, and the warehouse they rebuilt on this site, it burned, too. So around 1900 or so somebody got Despradelle to design this building to replace it. The top of the facade’s got that spike effect, ‘finials,’ Abe said they called them, with the flags. Now do you get it?”
    I thought I did. “The way you described the gate.”
    “That’s right. That’s absolutely on the button. This building, it looks like Buchenwald ’s front gate, only now Abe could be in the office looking down. We bought this store because we were in the furniture business, but I got to tell You, we bought this place because of the building more than the business. That’s what I meant about Abe being like that”
    “Resolute.”
    “What?”
    “Decisive, determined.”
    “Right. Resolute, yeah. That was Abe. He had to have this building, he had to offer Beverly the job, and he had to take Darbra on, too.”
    “Because he’d made up his mind.”
    “And believe me, it was easier to go along with him than to try to change it.”
    “Why Darbra?”
    “Why?”
    “Yes. I understand about the building and hiring Swindell, but why Darbra Proft?”
    “I think it was Pearl . She was doing a favor f0r somebody.”
    “Darbra’s brother?”
    “I think that was it.”
    “You never found out for sure?”
    “Like I said, with Abe, it was just easier to go along. He wasn’t a big guy—he always figured the time in the camp, the starvation, it stunted his growth—but he made up that mind of his, you couldn’t change it with dynamite.”
    That sudden blubbering sound came again from Bernstein, but again without any other sign.
    “So,” he said, “what else you need to know?”
    “We were talking about the night—”
    “Oh, right. Right. Sorry, where was I?”
    “In the men’s room.”
    “Right, and I was telling you—look, that was another of Abe’s ideas.”
    “What was?”
    “Us sharing the men’s room with the customers. Or Beverly and the female salespeople with the women. The idea was, you’d overhear things that might help you with the business.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like, ‘I really like a print on a sofa better than plain, don’t you?’ Or, ‘Man, blue leather is just so in, I gotta have it.’ Like that.”
    “So, you’re in the men’s room that night.”
    “Right.”
    “ For how long?”
    “How long? I don’t know. Was it ten minutes? Could have been. Fifteen? Maybe. These pills, they make it... uflpredictable, you know?”
    “Did you hear anything?”
    “Not till the alarms went off.”
    “Alarms?”
    “Yeah, the—well, I guess there’s just the one alarm, but we got sirens everywhere, and it just about deafened me in there with all that tile.”
    “What did you do?”
    “Started cursing. We’d had this trouble before, like I said.”
    “Then what?”
    “Well I—I finished up as quick as I could, then went out to the head of the stairs and yelled for Finian.”
    “The head of which stairs?”
    “The store stairs.”
    “Through the swinging doors.”
    “Right. But I don’t know if he could hear me. I sure as hell couldn’t hear him. So I walked back through the doors into the corridor here.”
    “The office corridor.”
    “Right. And I see Beverly down at the other end, and I yell to her, but she doesn’t hear me.”
    “What’s she doing?”
    “She’s got the door open—the door to the back stairs, now—and she’s yelling for Finian, too.”
    “You could hear her?”
    “Yeah— No, no, as a matter of fact, I couldn’t. Couldn’t hear what she was saying, I mean, just her voice over the alarm. I guess she must have told me later what she was saying. Anyway, I see her at the door, and when she doesn’t turn around after I yell at her, I go down to see what’s what.”
    “You didn’t see your partner.”
    “No. I was watching her. I glanced in the office here probably, but I don’t really remember doing it now.”
    “You glanced in here but didn’t see anything?”
    “Like I said, I maybe didn’t even glance in. That alarm it makes everything kind of fuzzy, you know?”
    “Go ahead.”
    “So I get to Beverly , and it’s like she’s seen a ghost or something. She’s yelling and crying, but I can’t make sense of it, except for the one word.”
    “Which word?”
    “ ‘Abe.’ ”
    This time I was ready for the blubbering sound, but Bernstein didn’t make it. “Then what happened?”
    “ Beverly turned around and started running back up