The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Landsman continues his investigation by interviewing the other hotel residents for leads. They all turn up empty. He examines the rooftop and the basement, finding nothing in the former and only assorted knick-knacks in storage in the latter. He checks the laundry room and finds a crawlspace. Despite his fear of the dark, he forces the crawlspace open and enters to check for evidence of the killer. He finds nothing.

Tenenboym speculates that the hotel is haunted. This causes Landsman to think of various strange occurrences that have happened recently in Sitka.

Landsman smokes outside the hotel. This is a habit he took up again after his ex-wife, Bina, became unexpectedly pregnant. Landsman was ambivalent about becoming a father. Bina lost the pregnancy after her fetus was found to have extra chromosomes, which would have caused abnormalities in the child. By then, they had already decided to name the child Django.

An old man called Elijah stops in front of the hotel and asks if it is the Zamenhof. When Landsman confirms that it is, Elijah looks longingly at the building. A rookie police officer named Netsky arrives to help examine the crime scene. Elijah asks for a donation intended for the cause of restoring the Holy Land, which Landsman feels no affinity for. He donates $20 anyway. Landsman is about to ask Elijah a question about the Holy Land and instead asks what he is carrying in his bag. Elijah explains that it is a big book about the coming of the Messiah. Landsman quips about the Messiah staying at the Zamenhof, which Elijah finds insulting. He returns Landsman’s donation.

Tenenboym informs Landsman that the hotel has been sold to American owners ahead of the Reversion. It is unknown whether the new owners plan to throw out the hotel’s current tenants, but Tenenboym warns Landsman to prepare for the possibility. A criminalist named Menashe Shpringer arrives to conduct the crime scene examination. Shpringer tells Landsman that this will be their last time working together as he will be moving to Saskatchewan the following day.

Shpringer takes pictures of the crime scene. Landsman makes sure that he takes pictures of the chessboard before bagging the pieces as evidence. It is clear that Lasker was passionate about chess because one of the few books he owned was on chess strategy. Shpringer asks Landsman if he heard any rumors from their squad commander, Inspector Felsenfeld. Landsman hasn’t heard anything, which makes him curious about what Shpringer knows.

Shrpinger finds evidence of Lasker having used heroin in the past. Instead of using a belt as a tourniquet, Lasker utilized a leather prayer strap with a box used to affix Torah passages to the wearer. Shpringer posits, however, that Lasker was not a Haredi Jew since he never wore a beard in line with tradition. Soon, the morgue workers arrive to clear Lasker’s body. Landsman returns to his room with the photo of Lasker’s chessboard and tries to discern clues from the game-in-progress. When he goes to bed later that night, he does not sleep and reminisces about the past until it is time to get up for work.

Landsman’s father, Isidor, and Hertz Shemets were childhood friends and members of the Makkabi Youth Chess Club in Lodz. In 1939, the grandmaster Savielly Tartakower challenged the club’s best player to a match. This turned out to be Isidor, who characteristically agonized over every move played in every game. During their game, Tartakower offered to end the match early by calling a draw. Though Isidor declined the offer, Tartakower reiterated it four hours later, irritated by Isidor’s playing style. Isidor finally accepted, prompting Tartakower to comment that Isidor’s mind must be an unenjoyable place to live in.

In 1941, Hertz and his family reached Baranof Island, Alaska, as part of the first wave of Sitka settlers. The passport he received restricted him from passing through any nearby port of entry in the United States. The Shemets family was initially placed in Camp Slattery to acclimate before moving to Sitka. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States government was forced to loosen its control over Camp Slattery, allowing the settlers to move freely to Sitka. Hertz studied criminal justice and became a paralegal.

In 1948, the destruction of Israel prompted the United States government to review the Sitka Settlement Act. At the time, Sitka was already a booming economy that served a population of 2 million Jews. The United States opted to grant Sitka “interim status,” but ruled out the possibility of Sitka ever becoming a full-fledged state. The term of the interim status would be 60 years, after which the Reversion would force the Sitka Jews to relocate to territories where they were legally entitled to residency.

In the summer of that year, Hertz reunited with Isidor Landsman on the street. Isidor, a Holocaust survivor, was initially despondent, but when he recognized his childhood friend, he burst into tears of joy. Hertz took Isidor to the café of the Hotel Einstein to meet other chess players, whom Isidor immediately defeated in a sequence of games. Afterward, Hertz invited Isidor to stay as a guest in his family home. Hertz’s sister, Freydl, instantly fell in love with Isidor and helped him to get settled in Sitka, buying him new clothes and finding him a room to rent. When she turned 18, Freydl married Isidor and started working as a journalist, eventually becoming features editor of a newspaper. She later died when Meyer was in college. Hertz, meanwhile, attended law school in Seattle and worked for the FBI’s Sitka detail, eventually becoming the director of its regional counterintelligence operations.

Isidor spent his days in Sitka as a chess player. When Meyer was old enough, Isidor taught him the game, but he was too controlling about Meyer’s moves to make it enjoyable for him. Several years later, Meyer wrote a letter to tell Isidor that he hated chess and that he didn’t want to play it anymore. He mailed it to his father, who soon died by suicide. Meyer blamed himself for his father’s death, but 23 years later, he learned that his letter had never even reached Isidor before he died.

Landsman travels to Berko’s apartment at the Dnyeper. He is greeted by Berko’s wife, Ester-Malke Taytsh, who is holding a pregnancy test. Berko is still getting ready, helped by his two sons. One of the sons, Goldy, comes out and greets Landsman, who is his godfather. Ester-Malke watches Landsman assemble a travel chess set to reflect the configuration of Lasker’s chess game. Landsman asks about the result of Ester-Malke’s pregnancy test. She is afraid to see what it is.

Berko enters the kitchen with his other son, the infant Pinky. Berko is a devout Jew who wears a ritual undershirt with his work clothes. Berko, Landsman’s cousin who was known as “Johnny Bear” in his youth, started living at the Landsman house when he was a teenager. Aside from being Jewish, he is also a member of the Tlingit tribe, having been born to a Tlingit woman whom Hertz met while working for the FBI. Hertz’s mother, Laurie Jo Bear, was one of the casualties of a Jewish-Tlingit conflict called the Synagogue Riots. Though Johnny requested to live with Hertz, Hertz took him to Freydl’s, fearing that Johnny would be murdered by vengeful Tlingit people. As he grew up, Johnny embraced his Jewish heritage and renamed himself Ber Shemets.

Ester-Malke doesn’t want Berko to know that she took a test, so Landsman diverts Berko’s attention by talking about the Lasker case. Thanks to the chess strategy book he found in Lasker’s room, Landsman reveals that “Emanuel Lasker” is an alias taken from a 20th-century professional chess player. He has yet to discern any clues from Lasker’s chessboard, however.

Ester-Malke announces that she is pregnant, which upsets Berko because their unit is too small to accommodate another child. He throws the chess strategy book across the table. Landsman excuses himself so that Berko and Ester-Malke can talk things out. Berko joins Landsman in his car several minutes later, resolving to find a bigger place to move his family to. He shows Landsman a photograph that had dislodged from the chess book when he threw it. The photograph shows a sign that reads “PIE.” Landsman recognizes it from a pie shop near the northernmost city of Sitka, Yakovy. He and Berko are unsure what the photograph means.

Landsman and Berko report to Sitka Central Homicide, where they learn that Inspector Felsenfeld has already resigned his post as squad commander and left for Australia. His replacement is Landsman’s ex-wife, Bina Gelbfish, who, shortly after their divorce, took a leadership training program and quickly ascended the administrative ranks of Yakovy Homicide. Bina will oversee the turnover of Sitka Central’s administration to the United States Interior Department, which will begin at the start of the following week with the arrival of a U.S. Marshal named Spade.

Bina brings the two detectives into her office to explain the impact that Reversion will have on their 11 open cases. The Sitka administration’s official policy, which is called “effective resolution,” states that all cases should be closed by the time Reversion takes effect. Any remaining cases that Landsman and Berko fail to close will be considered suspended and archived. Landsman and Berko point out that they recently opened a new case to solve Lasker’s murder. Bina demonstrates the principle of effective resolution by suspending the case.

Landsman and Berko navigate the city’s establishments to look for a place where they can talk in privacy. They are spotted by a reporter named Dennis Brennan, who was promoted out of Sitka after breaking a big news story. He was later reassigned to work again in the Sitka bureau as punishment for disgracing himself. Brennan wants the detectives to give him a lead, but he feels he cannot ask them for one without defending himself. The big news story Brennan broke exposed Hertz Shemets’s counterintelligence work for the FBI, which involved destabilizing radical groups that undermined the United States’s authority in the region. The story effectively ended Hertz’s career and destroyed Landsman’s admiration for his uncle. Brennan stands by his reportage, but he regrets the way it affected his relationship with the detectives.

Berko insults Brennan, citing the destructive impact the news story had on his father’s life. Hertz now lives as a hermit. Berko defends his father’s work, claiming it was important for Jewish-American relations. He refuses to give Brennan information on the case they are working on. Brennan deduces they are working on a murder case.

Landsman and Berko settle down at the Vorsht, a discreet music club run by a widow named Mrs. Kalushiner. Landsman tells Berko that he needs a favor. Berko guesses that the favor involves “effective resolution,” though Landsman does not confirm this. They digress by talking about Bina and how her competence is likely to earn her a post-Reversion job with the United States government. Landsman doesn’t believe this is why she assumed Felsenfeld’s post, however.

Landsman refuses the offer of beer and goes to use the men’s room. He finds a guitarist sleeping in the men’s room. He pats the guitarist down and finds that he was robbed of everything except his Canadian vodka. Landsman assures himself that he doesn’t want to drink alcohol at the moment. He thinks this sudden refusal has to do with Bina’s reappearance in his life. Landsman drinks the guitarist’s vodka anyway.

Landsman returns to Berko and starts to explain the favor he needs. He starts by pointing out that Berko and Ester-Malke have applied for green card residency, implying that he himself has not. Berko doubts the odds that he and Ester-Malke can get documented as legal residents in spite of his father’s influence. Part of Brennan’s report included the detail that all of Hertz’s operations were a front for the long-term objective of acquiring Permanent Status for Sitka. Berko worries that this works against his and Ester-Malke’s chances. Nevertheless, Berko and Ester-Malke possess work permits that will allow them to remain in the United States for up to three years. Landsman acknowledges that they will be reluctant to do anything that might risk their residency application.

Landsman digresses again to talk about the note that his father left when he died. The note contained a six-line Yiddish poem addressed to an unspecified woman. The speaker expresses remorse for his inadequacy, as well as gratitude for the comfort the woman’s presence gave him. Everyone initially assumed that the poem was addressed to Landsman’s mother. Landsman himself previously memorized the poem, but he forced himself to forget it because he realized that the poem was an acrostic that spelled the word “Caissa,” referring to the goddess of chess players. Landsman refers back to Lasker’s chessboard to explain why he is so committed to the case. At this juncture, he brings up the favor he needs to ask without stating it explicitly: He wants to solve the Lasker case despite its suspension.

Berko walks up to the Kalushiners’ dog, Hershel, to let it sniff his hand. He releases Hershel from his chain and tells him that Mr. Kalushiner isn’t coming back. Hershel walks to Landsman, who confirms Berko’s statement. Hershel then exits the Vorsht. Berko points out that they have nine weeks to solve the case, among all their other cases. Landsman argues that they should solve it before Ester-Malke gives birth, or else they will risk the residency of Berko’s new child as well. Berko laments that he only ever had cousins instead of siblings. He supposes that their first stop will be the Hotel Einstein. Hershel returns to his spot by the leash.