Surprised, yes, but not frightened. He’d dealt with plenty of lunatics in his life. It might even be said that, as an attorney, he possessed a certain gift with them. He assessed the situation: the knife wasn’t large. It could hurt but not kill.
“All right, then,” he began calmly. “How about if I give you the cash? There must be at least three hundred dollars in here, maybe more. You take it all, and I’ll just keep the cards. You don’t have any use for those—they’ll be canceled in two minutes, and anyway you’ll probably just toss them in the trash. This way we both go away happy.” As Epstein spoke, he held the wallet in front of him, away from his body, and slowly removed the wad of bills. The man snatched it. But he wasn’t through with Epstein apparently, for now he was barking something else. Epstein failed to understand.
“What?”
The man raked the blade quickly across Epstein’s breast. “What’s in there?”
Epstein stepped back, clamping his hand over his heart.
“Where?” he gasped.
“On the inside!”
“Nothing,” he said quietly.
“Show me,” the homeless man said, or so Epstein thought; it was almost impossible to make out his slurred speech. The thought of his father, whose own speech had become permanently slurred after a stroke, flashed through Epstein’s mind, while the man continued to breathe heavily, weapon poised.
Slowly, Epstein unbuttoned the coat that wasn’t his, and then the gray flannel suit jacket that was. He opened the silk-lined pocket that usually held the little green book, and tipped forward on his toes to show the man that it was empty. It was all so absurd that he might have laughed, had there not been a knife so near his throat. Perhaps it could kill after all. Glancing down, Epstein saw himself lying underfoot in a pool of blood, unable to call for help. A question came into focus in his mind, one that had lingered vaguely for some weeks, and now he tried it, as if to test its fit: Had the hand of God reached down and pointed at him? But why him? When he looked up again, the knife was gone, and the man had turned and was hurrying away. Epstein stood frozen for a moment, until the man disappeared into the circle of light at the other end, and he was left alone in the tunnel. Only when he lifted his hand to touch his throat did he realize that his fingers were shaking.
Ten minutes later, having safely arrived in the lobby of the Dakota, Epstein was borrowing another phone. “I’m a friend of the Rosenblatts’,” he’d told the doorman. “I was just robbed. My phone, too.” The doorman lifted the house phone to call up to 14B. “Don’t bother,” Epstein said quickly. “I’ll just make a call and be on my way.” He reached behind the desk and dialed himself once more. It went through to his voice again, recorded long ago but still arriving. He cut the line and called Sharon. She picked up, full of apologies for having missed his earlier call. She’d already put in calls to the UN. Abbas was speaking in fifteen minutes, and at the moment no one in his party could be reached, but she was getting in a cab now and would make sure to intercept them before they left the building. Epstein told her to call Maura to say that she should go ahead to the concert without him.
“Tell her I was mugged,” he said.
“OK, you were mugged,” said Sharon.
“I really was,” Epstein said, more softly than he had meant to, for once again he saw himself sprawled on the ground, the dark blood slowly spreading. Glancing up, he caught eyes with the doorman, who he saw didn’t believe him either.
“Seriously?” his assistant asked.
Epstein cut her off: “I’ll be home in half an hour. Call me then.”
“Listen,” he said to the doorman, “I’m in a pinch. Can you lend me a twenty? I’ll remember you at Christmas. In the meantime, the Rosenblatts are good for it.”
Having handed over the bills, the doorman hailed a cab going south on Central Park West. Having nothing left to tip him with, neither cash nor rings, Epstein offered only a humble nod and gave the address of his building, across the park and fifteen blocks north. The taxi driver shook his head in annoyance, rolled down the window, and spat thickly. It was always the same: if you diverted them from their natural course and asked them to reverse direction, they always took it badly. It was a nearly universal aspect of the psychology of New York City taxi drivers, Epstein had often lectured to anyone who was with him in the backseat. Once they were in motion, having been stymied by traffic jams and red lights, everything in them longed to continue the motion. That money was to be made by turning around and going in the opposite direction hardly mattered at the moment the news was delivered: they felt it as a defeat and resented it.
The atmosphere in the cab only darkened when the traffic going uptown on Madison turned out to be at a dead standstill, and the streets going west were blocked off. Epstein rolled down the window and called to a policeman, fat and muscular like a ballplayer, stationed by a sawhorse.
“What’s going on here?”
“They’re filming a movie,” the officer reported dully, scanning the sky for fly balls.
“You’re kidding me, right? That’s the second time this month! Who told Bloomberg he could sell the city to Hollywood? Some of us still happen to live here!”
Released from the smelly cab, Epstein marched down Eighty-Fifth Street, which was lined with humming trailers powered by a giant, roaring generator. Passing the catering table, he lifted a doughnut without slowing down and bit into it, the jelly spurting.
But when he turned onto Fifth Avenue, he halted, for there he found that snow had fallen. The trees, lit by huge lights, were cloaked in white, and along the sidewalk great drifts sparkled like mica. All was silent and sedated; even the team of black horses hitched to a hearse stood unmoving with bowed heads, the snow swirling down around them. Through the carriage’s glass windows, Epstein saw the long shadow of an ebony coffin. A flood of grave respect coursed through him—not just the reflexive awe one feels at the passing of life, but something else, too: a sense of what the world, with its unfathomable pockets, was capable of. But it was fleeting. A moment later the camera crane came rolling down the street, and the magic was broken.
As at last he came in sight of the warmly lit lobby of his building, a wave of exhaustion broke over Epstein. All he wanted now was to be home, where he could ease himself into the giant bathtub and let the day drain away. But as he began to walk toward the entrance, he was thwarted once more, this time by a woman in a puffy anorak wielding a clipboard.
“They’re shooting!” she hissed. “You have to wait at the corner.”
“I live here,” Epstein snapped back.