Invisible City (22 page)

“Where’d you get these?” asks Suri, now standing over me.

“Heshy’s drawer.”

“You went in his drawer? It’s not locked?”

“If it was locked, I couldn’t get in it,” says Dev.

Suri is not happy. “We have drawers, lockers sort of, in the mudroom downstairs,” she tells me. “Just to put stuff you need, like a toothbrush, or money, or whatever. Do you go in mine?”

“You lock yours,” says Dev. “Anyway, do you think that’s normal? Having your sister-in-law’s photos tucked in a little stash so you can look at them whenever you want?”

“How long have you been going in there?” ask Suri.

Dev shrugs. “Does it matter?”

Suri sits down next to me to look at the photos. “Maybe Heshy killed her,” she says softly.

My hands feel clammy and hot. Heshy is downstairs. Is anyone else in the house?

“Does anyone else know about these?” I ask Dev.

She shrugs and goes into Suri’s bag for her pipe and pot. As she’s lighting another hit, my phone rings. It’s Tony. I silence it.

“How long did you know Rivka?” I ask Dev.

“As long as she’s been coming here, I guess. A year? Less? I don’t know.”

“Did you know she’d lost a child?” I ask. Both girls nod. “Do you know what happened?”

“She said it was asthma or something,” says Suri. “She said Shoshanna—that was the little girl’s name—had weak lungs. I thought it was kind of weird. Rivka’s husband is rich. I
know
there’s medicine for asthma. My little brother has it. Anyway, we only talked about it once. She kept saying it was preventable.”

“Do you know what she meant by that?”

“Not really. I mean, I figured she meant that, like, she felt guilty. Maybe she’d missed some medication or something. But she said it really angry. That was weird, too, actually.”

“Why was it weird?”

“It felt like she wasn’t saying everything. It was like she blamed something, or someone.”

“Did either of you ever meet her husband?”

Suri shakes her head.

“I did,” says Dev. “About two weeks ago. He came here. He was fucking pissed.”

“She didn’t think he knew she’d been coming here,” says Suri.

“We were in the kitchen. Fucking Moses let them in.”

“Them?” I ask.

“Him and Heshy and Heshy’s wife.”

Heshy’s wife. “Miriam?” I ask.

Dev shrugs. “She was Rivka’s age, but she was uglier.” That could be Miriam, I think.

“Heshy was with them?” asks Suri.

“Yeah. He’s such a fucking putz. He was, like, pretending he’d never been here. The husband came in and
grabbed
Rivka. He shook her really hard. She dropped a plate and it broke on the floor but nobody even noticed. He was shouting and his face was so close, he was totally spitting on her. And she didn’t say a word.”

“What did he say?” I ask.

“He said what you’d expect. He said she had betrayed her community and her family and Hashem and everything. He said he’d divorce her and shun her and she’d never see her children again. I thought she’d, like, yell back. Tell him off, or at least try to
explain,
but she didn’t. She just sort of zoned out. It was like someone turned her off. Baruch came running from upstairs and I thought they’d, like, announce their love, but she basically ignored him. I don’t think he knew what to do. And then Heshy’s wife fainted.”

Suri looks skeptical.

“I’m serious. She took one look at Baruch and keeled over. It was super dramatic. Aron and Heshy carried her out to the car. Rivka refused to go with them, but afterward she was, like, catatonic. Baruch was pacing and muttering about the laws and what countries would give them asylum with their kids.”

“Asylum?” asks Suri.

“He was saying they were being oppressed because of their religion, or lack of religion, and that the judicial system was corrupt—which it is—and that Rivka should be able to keep her children because she’d always been their primary caregiver. I asked him what happened with the sister-in-law, and he said she must have recognized him from the grocery store. He said once when he and Rivka were shopping—that’s how they used to meet at first, before they started fucking, at the grocery store. He’d, like, shop with her and they’d talk. They ran into her and Rivka pretended she didn’t know him, but Baruch said the lady looked suspicious.”

“So she
fainted
?” asks Suri. “That’s weird. You’re sure that’s why?”

“Who fucking knows? The whole thing was weird.”

“Do you remember the woman’s name?” I ask. “Was it Miriam?”

“Maybe,” says Dev. “You can ask Heshy.”

My phone rings. It’s Tony again. I decline the call just as we all hear the front door slam and someone come in.

“Suri, before I forget, can I get your last name? And your age?”

“Goldblatt,” she says. “I’m seventeen.”

“You can use mine, too, if you want,” says Dev. “Devorah Kletzky. I’m twenty-two.”

Whoever is coming up the stairs shakes the house. A man appears at the bedroom door. He is breathing heavily, and he is drunk. Pickled. The alcohol has a sweet-and-sour smell as it seeps as sweat out of his pores. He looks at Dev and Suri and then he looks at me. I’ve got my notebook out but he doesn’t seem to notice. Just another Jew girl in the house at Coney Island.

“I need to take a nap,” he says.

“You stink, Baruch,” says Dev.

Baruch does stink, but he is nonetheless incredibly attractive. He has olive skin and dark wavy hair. He’s months past a haircut and thick curls fall in front of his eyes. He is lean, but seems powerful. The veins in his hands are thick with blood. I don’t really know anything about how Rivka Mendelssohn felt about her husband, but looking at the man she was considering leaving him for, I can’t help but wonder if sheer chemistry wasn’t part of it. Baruch is fucking hot.

“Moses wants to talk to you,” he says. I’m not sure which of them he’s talking to.

“Tell Moses he can come get me if he wants to talk to me,” says Dev.

“He wants to talk to you, too,” says Baruch, looking at Suri. “He doesn’t think we’re taking it well.”

“What?” says Suri.

“He doesn’t think we’re taking it well,” he says, louder.

“Clearly
you’re
not taking it well,” says Dev.

“How could I take it well!”

“He seriously wants to talk to us?” asks Suri. Her eyes are darting between Dev and Baruch.

“Fine,” says Dev. “We want to talk to him, too. We’ve got something to show him.”

“Dev…,” says Suri.

“Look!” Dev says, grabbing the photographs from me and shoving them at Baruch. He doesn’t catch them all and several fall to the floor. He fumbles for a moment with the photographs, then, recognizing their subject, straightens up. His breathing slows.

“This is Baruch,” says Dev, introducing him to me.

“Where did you get these?” asks Baruch, his voice quiet now.

“Heshy’s drawer,” says Dev.

Baruch looks at Dev. His eyes are liquid with drink. Bloodshot and cloudy.

“Yank material starring your girlfriend,” she says, enjoying her crude explanation.

Baruch frowns. He’s trying to put the pieces together with a spinning mind.

“I think Moses should know about these,” says Dev. “I mean, if he’s going to make us talk about our feelings…”

“Moses knows about this?” says Baruch.

“No,” says Suri, standing up. She’s a smart girl. This conversation is about to get ugly. “Moses doesn’t.…”

“Why don’t you just ask Heshy? He’s right downstairs,” says Dev.

This gets Baruch’s attention. “He’s here?”

Dev shrugs. “You didn’t see him? He’s been here all day.”

Baruch turns and runs down the hall. Suri and Dev follow. I bend down and grab one of the photos he dropped, sliding it under my coat as I go after them.

Downstairs, Baruch is shouting in Yiddish, and Dev and Suri are standing in the doorway between the hallway and the kitchen. A tall man whom I take to be Moses is standing inches from Baruch, trying to keep him away from Heshy, who is cowering on the sofa. Next to him sits Saul.

He doesn’t see me at first; like everyone else in the room, he is focused on Baruch. But I see him, in a moment unguarded, and something seems wrong. Why didn’t he tell me he was coming here?

“Who’s that?” says Dev, pointing at Saul.

Saul looks at Dev and sees me standing behind her. He stands up, leaving Heshy to sink farther into the sofa.

Baruch shakes the pictures at Heshy. “What did you do to her!” he shouts.

“Baruch,” says Saul, stepping toward him. “Heshy is…”

Baruch runs at Saul, his hands up like he wants to fight. But Saul, twice his age and several inches shorter, is ready. In a swift, easy motion he grabs Baruch’s left wrist and twists his arm down and back, hard. Baruch screams in pain, falling to his knees.

“You’re hurting him!” shouts Dev. “Let go!”

Saul does not let go. Dev runs at Saul, and he pushes her aside. She stumbles back, then falls on her ass with a thud.

“Saul…” I say, stepping forward.

“Rebekah, I have this under control,” he says.

“I’m calling the cops,” says Suri.

“I am the cops,” says Saul, glaring at her.

Suri looks at me. I don’t know what to say. Saul looks like a different person. The dumpy, tired cop I met on Friday is gone. In his place is a man confident with his physical strength. Baruch is no longer fighting and Saul lets him go, but Baruch stays on the floor, slumping to the side. He brings his hands to his face and begins to weep.

“Everybody needs to calm down,” Saul says. He looks down at Baruch. “Do you understand?”

Baruch grunts an affirmative. Dev crawls to sit beside him. Heshy is still half-sitting half-lying down on the sofa, and Suri and Moses are standing, looking at Saul.

“I know you’re all very upset about Rivka,” says Saul. “I’m here to ask some questions. That’s all.”

My phone rings again. It’s Tony again. I silence it and see I’ve missed a text from him:

saul katz is not a cop

CHAPTER TWELVE

“He’s on indefinite suspension from the NYPD,” says Tony. I’m halfway to the F train station with the phone to my ear.

“Oh,” I say, stopping to catch my breath beneath some scaffolding across the street from a housing project. “So he
is
a cop.”

“No! Rebekah. If he’s pretending to be on the job when he isn’t, you need to stay away from him. He’s off the rails.”

I bolted from the house the moment I got Tony’s text, hoping, as I ran down the steps and around the corner that maybe everyone in that living room would just forget I’d ever been there. I’ve got three people on the record now. I’ve got a photograph of Rivka Mendelssohn. I have a story even without Saul. What I don’t have is any fucking answers.

“I assume Darin told you this,” I say. Obviously, the information that Saul—whom I’ve been quoting as a source inside the NYPD—has been suspended from the force is important, but I’m still unhappy with Tony for getting Darin involved in my life. I feel like a child and I’m going to kick. “I’m glad he’s so concerned with my welfare.”

“I’m the one that’s concerned for your welfare, okay?” says Tony. “This guy’s been lying to you, Rebekah. He might be a bad guy.”

“What do you mean, a bad guy?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “But Darin says they want you to come in.”

“Come in?”

“To the station,” says Tony. “They want to ask you some questions.”

“Questions about what?”

“About Saul. I think they think he might have been involved in the murder. Apparently, he has a history of violence.”

I need to sit down somewhere and think. Other than lying about his employment status, everything Saul has told me so far has been true. No one from the police department has been to the Coney Island house to ask Rivka’s friends—or lover—any questions. No one has talked to her sister-in-law or her brother-in-law or her husband or her son. No one but Malka and Saul and me and, presumably, her killer, has seen her injuries up close. I’d like to hear Darin explain how all that adds up to a proper homicide investigation.

“Where’s Darin’s precinct?” I say. “I’ll take the train.”

“I can pick you up,” he says. I almost feel sorry for him.

“I’ll call you after,” I say, and hang up. I know I’m being a bitch, but I don’t want his worry and guilt clouding my judgment any more than the situation with Saul and my now possibly in-jeopardy job already are.

I turn around and start walking back toward the house. At the end of the block, I see Saul.

“Rebekah,” he says, jogging toward me. “Are you all right?”

I step back. “Why have you been lying to me, Saul?”

“Lying?” His yarmulke is askew, his coat unbuttoned.

“You’re not a cop anymore.”

Saul closes his eyes for a moment. “Rebekah…”

“What are you doing here that you don’t want me to know about?”

“Rebekah, I understand you’re upset,” he says. “I hope you know I’m only trying to work…”

“What were you talking to Heshy about?”

Saul takes a breath. “Heshy is a troubled man.”

For some reason this makes me laugh. My teeth are chattering but I’m not cold anymore. I feel like I’m on speed. “Every single person in there is troubled, Saul. That doesn’t mean shit. What did he say? Did he tell you Aron and Miriam were here? Did he tell you Aron threatened Rivka?”

“Moses asked me to come to the house to speak with Heshy,” says Saul slowly. “He felt perhaps Heshy knew something about what had happened to Rivka. I didn’t call you, because I knew he wouldn’t talk to a woman.”

“Do you have any idea what kind of situation you’ve put me in? I’m going to
lose my job
when they find out my source is a fucking suspended…”

“Rebekah…”

“And I assume the NYPD has no idea you’re currently acting as a homicide detective?”

“I don’t think so,” says Saul. There is no apology in his voice. He doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong.

“What did you do to get suspended?” I ask.

Saul hesitates.

“Tell me or I’m going to go back in there and tell them all you’re a fucking fraud and that they should report you to the police.”