“Where is Antwerp?” Decker asked.

“Belgium. It’s where VerHauten distributes its stones. Everyone big goes to Antwerp.”

“Why Antwerp?”

“Why do you go to the supermarket to buy milk? Because it’s where diamonds are.”

Decker held back a smile. “I meant why did VerHauten set up distribution there? Why not in South Africa?”

“VerHauten wants a center in Europe. And Belgium gives them easy laws.” Gold paused. “Sometimes for a special client, Arik goes to Belgium and buys big uncut stones. Mostly we go to Israel and buy cut, mid-sized stones. More diamonds are cut in Israel than anywhere else in the world.”

Gold rested the cigarette in his ashtray.

“Still, I don’t know anyone who would hurt Arik to put us out of business. This whole thing is very strange.”

Decker flipped the cover over his notepad. “Yes, it is.”

Gold ran his hand over his face. “Even with the gun, I’m worried. Because I don’t know who this enemy is.” He looked at Decker. “You keep looking for them?”

“For a while,” Decker said. “But without a body, we can’t justify looking for an extended period of time. The family may have taken off on their own accord.”

He stood and so did Gold. “We’ll keep in touch.”

Decker walked over to the door, then paused. “Mr. Gold, do you know where Yalom might keep his passport?”

Gold was quiet for a moment. “No. Why?”

“If he took off for anywhere international, he’d need his passport.”

“I don’t know about Arik’s passport,” Gold said. “Come. I’ll walk you out.”

Decker realized that Gold was inching him down the hallway. Yalom’s partner had been cooperative, even loquacious at times. But Decker couldn’t shake the feeling that Gold was holding back. He spoke at length about VerHauten, but little about Arik and his business dealings.

They reentered the sally port. Yochie was about to buzz them out. She said, “Uh-oh. You get company, Shaul.”

Decker looked at the outside TV monitor. A Chasid with a white beard. He was wearing a tall black hat and long black coat.

“Shnorrers,” Gold said with resignation. “They don’t leave me alone.”

“No, they don’t,” Decker agreed.

Gold looked at him. “You know about shnorrers?”

Decker nodded. Ostensibly, they collected money for worthy causes. Sometimes the worthy causes were themselves. Since he had married Rina, they had invaded his house with outstretched hands, and always at inconvenient times. But Rina had a soft heart. She always gave them something.

Shaul said, “Open the door, Yochie.”

She complied. The Chasid touched the mezuzah, kissed his hand, then walked inside. But Gold pushed him back out. Decker followed them into the hallway.

Gold said, “Every day, it’s someone else.”

The Chasid started a pitch in a foreign tongue.

“Maspeek.” Gold opened his wallet and took out a twenty. “That’s all I have. Go.”

The shnorrer didn’t budge.

Gold showed the man his empty wallet. “No more kesef. Lech. Mayveen?”

The shnorrer said, “Ani mayveen.” He looked at Decker.

Decker blew out air, then took out a twenty from his wallet and gave it to the man. The shnorrer pocketed the money, muttered some blessing, then moved on to the next mezuzah down the hallway.

Even though it was the job, Marge felt like a snoop. Decker had warned her about the feeling. True she had gone through other houses from the rafters to the baseboards, but in those cases, the occupants had been alive. Though Marge had no evidence that the Yaloms were dead, it didn’t look good. Though the paper still came and the mail was still being delivered, the only living things left in the Yalom place were houseplants.

So with key in hand, courtesy of Orit Bar Lulu, Marge plundered through items, bit by bit, with no one standing over her shoulder, nobody protesting her presence, or cussing her out.

They couldn’t have just fallen off the planet!

Within three hours, she had amassed an abbreviated biography of the Yaloms’ lives, had discovered private matter…secrets.

Dalia Yalom was on the pill and was a hidden lover of the soaps. To wit: magazines featuring daytime serials stowed in a hatbox, along with an autographed eight by ten glossy of a handsome but plastic man. Dalia’s closets were well stocked although there wasn’t an obscene amount of clothing for a woman of her means. But she did have odd tastes. A shoe collection made up of dozens of sneakers-beaded ones, painted ones, embroidered ones. She had tennis shoes made of everything from buckskin to terry cloth, from silk to see-through plastic. A variation of the glass slipper.

Though Marge had sifted through the shoes, one by one, she had found nothing. Satisfying herself that the master bedroom was devoid of clues, she’d moved on to the boys’ rooms.

She’d found Dov’s small stash, not much more than a few measly crumbs of cannabis. Dov’s escape from an overbearing father. She’d also discovered voluminous writings and stories crammed into three binders in the back of his closet. In light of what Decker had told her, Dov’s stories about loneliness and alienation had come as no surprise.

What had surprised Marge had been the secret poetry of the older brother, Gil. Here was a sensitive soul. The writing was amateurish, excessive as only teens can be, but it was thoughtful. The older boy’s poems spoke of flowers budding in a mire of human greed, of good emanating from a cesspool of evil, of the birth of a child cradled from the ashes of the fire. Marge wasn’t quite sure to whom or what the kid had been referring, but the message seemed unusually positive for an adolescent.

Marge had looked and Marge had learned.

Decker fingered the Israeli passports with gloved hands. “Where’d you find these?”

“In a billfold inside the Cross briefcase.” Marge pointed to a black-leather attaché with a gold clasp. “I didn’t even see this luggage set the first time around because the attic closet has such an odd shape.”

“The briefcase was hidden?”

“Not at all,” Marge said. “I just didn’t see it. I thought the closet door just led to finished attic space. At that point, the roof comes down at such a severe angle, you can’t even stand up. So I just poked my head inside and saw the area was empty. It wasn’t until the second time around that I actually ducked inside-at much expense to my back muscles-and saw the space was actually a closet that wraps around the house. There’s this huge storage area on the other side containing the main family luggage. I’ll show it to you if you want, but I’ve already been through it all. The rest of the valises were empty.”

Decker sorted through the papers inside the case-Xeroxes of birth certificates, Social Security cards, insurance cards, INS papers. He wondered where the originals were. If Yalom took the papers with him, why did he leave behind the passports?

Because the two passports he held were the originals. And they were up-to-date. He said, “You didn’t find the boys’ passports?”

“Nope,” Marge said. “And I looked. That could be significant. If the boys whacked the parents, maybe they took an international one-way flight.”

Decker thumbed through Yalom’s passport-pages of stamped entries back into the States, Yalom’s residing country. Then there were many other pages of foreign ink-Canada, Mexico, countries of Western and Eastern Europe including Russia, entries from the Far East, Latin America, and Africa. Lots from Africa-Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, Namibia, Liberia, Angola, Sudan, Ethiopia, Zaire, plus a host of other countries Decker didn’t know existed.

Dalia’s visa was simpler-stamps from Western Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, and the United States every time she reentered the country.

Marge said, “Yalom was quite the Phileas Fogg.”