Invisible City (23 page)

Saul lowers his voice. “I was suspended because I assaulted a man.” He pauses, then continues. “I told you that Rivka Mendelssohn stood up for my son when he was fired from his teaching position? He was fired, in part, because of what this man had done.”

“In part?”

“Can we please go back inside?” asks Saul. “I can explain.”

“I’m supposed to go to talk to the cops,” I say. “They think you’re … involved.”

Saul nods sadly. “Do you think I’m involved?”

“No,” I say, and it’s the truth. I’ve been thinking about it since getting Tony’s text. If Saul had been involved in killing Rivka Mendelssohn, there is no way he would have taken me to see her body. It was a desperate, dangerous move on his part, the only way he could think of to force me to care enough to keep her death in the paper. It hadn’t been difficult to reel me in: You look just like your mother, he had said. That was all it took. I’ve spent twenty years battling the ghost of Aviva Kagan. Fighting to extinguish any emotion involving her. Tamping down anger and longing. Talking myself out of curiosity. My brain and stomach and heart engaged in a fucking war of attrition against any trace of her. And it hasn’t worked at all. I’ve never been without her for a moment—and I’ve never really wanted to be. The moment Saul said her name, I knew there was nothing on earth I wanted more than to see her; for her to see me. That he lied about his position and that I didn’t think to question it infuriates me. But that shit is about me, not Saul. Saul is not the bad guy here.

“Good,” he says. “Then let me tell you what happened before they do. At least then you’ll have both sides.”

I follow Saul back down the block and into the house. Saul opens a door just off the tiny foyer and we enter a den slash storage closet. Navy blue sheets function as curtains, and two futons are the only furniture. There are boxes and bicycles. An old acoustic guitar leans against one wall, a folded-up crib leans against another.

“Would you like to sit?” asks Saul.

“I think I’ll stand.”

Saul takes a deep breath. “My son, Binyamin, was abused as a child. Sexually.” He looks me in the eyes as he speaks. “Do you understand?” I nod. “After his mother and I separated, she and Binyamin moved back in with her mother and father in Crown Heights. The abuse took place at his yeshiva. I knew something was wrong with him. He was angry and defiant and unhappy, but I blamed the divorce. He did not have a father.”

“My dad said you weren’t allowed to see him,” I say.

“I could have handled the situation better,” he says. “The man who abused my son, and many other boys, was a rebbe. It went on for years—decades—until someone finally spoke to law enforcement. The man was indicted, eventually, but the case fell apart last year. The DA was unable to secure enough witnesses.” Saul pauses. “I argued with one of the men who was involved in silencing the victims, and it got physical.”

“When was this?”

“December. It was a mistake. I allowed myself to be provoked.”

“Who was this man?”

“His name is Leiby Bronner. He was the director of Crown Heights Shomrim.”

“Shomrim, really?”

“If you have not physically witnessed the act of abuse, you are not permitted to go to secular authorities with your suspicions. Most families would go to their rebbe. But if the rebbe is the one you suspect…” Saul pauses. “Parents called Shomrim. But they were directed to keep their stories to themselves. And the man continued to abuse.”

“Is this why your son was fired from his job?” I ask.

“Not exactly,” says Saul, looking away.

There is a soft knock at the door and then Suri peeks inside.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she says.

“Come in,” says Saul. I decide to let the last non-answer be; he’s explained enough for now.

“Baruch went upstairs to lay down and Dev went with him,” says Suri. She has her backpack on her shoulder like she is getting ready to leave. “Moses took Heshy home.”

“I’m sorry for the commotion,” says Saul.

“Are you going to find out who killed Rivka?” she asks.

I look at Saul. “That’s what we’re trying to do,” he says.

“It’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to hurt her,” says Suri. “There’s always a lot of drama around here. Everybody is so unhappy and afraid all the time, you know? Rivka was unhappy, too, I guess, but she never seemed that way. She seemed like she’d found some kind of peace, somehow.”

Suri takes off her backpack and opens it. I pull out my notebook; that was a great quote:
She seemed like she’d found some kind of peace.

“She was helping me study for my GED. She was really smart, you know. She read a lot. She would give me books she thought I’d like,” says Suri, showing us a paperback book called
The God Delusion
.

“Baruch is big into atheism, so he read a lot about that. Rivka still believed in Hashem, but she gave me this one book because he talks about how people who grew up with religious parents and in a religious community like ours don’t even know they
can
think differently. And it’s totally true. I didn’t know I had a choice. Rivka was big on choice. She used to agonize over how her husband was raising their children. She wanted them to know that the world was bigger than Brooklyn. And that it wasn’t all scary.”

“Do you know if there was anyone she was afraid of?” Saul asks.

Suri shakes her head. “Rivka wasn’t afraid of much. Except losing her kids. She was really afraid of that. If it turned out she was pregnant with Baruch’s baby, that would have been really bad. She would have lost custody for sure.”

“Do you think Baruch could have killed her?” asks Saul.

Suri looks at the ground. “I don’t think so. They were so in love. It was really cute. Rivka said being in love had changed her. She said she couldn’t help but think Hashem wanted her to be with Baruch.”

“But Dev said he filed for divorce and she didn’t,” I say.

Suri shrugs. “I guess. But honestly, Dev could be making that up. She lies a lot.”

Saul takes a business card out of his pocket and gives it to Suri. “I appreciate your honesty,” he says. “Call me if you think of anything. Or if you have any more questions.”

Suri says she will, and then leaves. I turn to Saul. “I assume that’s an NYPD card.”

“Yes, but it has my cell phone number on it,” says Saul, almost smiling. “Now, do you mind my asking how you learned about my suspension?”

“This guy I’ve been seeing, he’s friends with a detective. I told the guy about you because I thought I could trust him. He told his friend. And now they want to talk to me.”

“They?”

“The detective, I guess. His bosses? I don’t think his precinct is responsible for the case, but presumably he contacted whoever is.”

“Well,” he says, “I’m sure they’ll be calling me, too. I have my car here. Why don’t we turn ourselves in together?”

*   *   *

We pull up in front of the precinct just before six. The station is inside a neat brick building, probably built in the 1960s. The area it serves encompasses several neighborhoods, including my own, where Rivka Mendelssohn was found—nearly carried away forever on the Gowanus canal. Also in this precinct are several upscale residential and commercial neighborhoods. Single-family brownstones with tasteful, low, wrought-iron fences around their yards. A movie-star couple lives two blocks away. I sat outside their house for two nights just before Christmas for a story about celebrities on Broadway, but I never saw either of them. There are several bakeries and Thai restaurants, an artisanal ice cream shop, that sort of thing. And the scrap yard at the very end. I wonder if they’ve ever found a body on the canal before this.

Saul and I approach the desk sergeant.

“My name is Rebekah Roberts,” I say. “I’m here to see—”

Before I can finish, the officer, a petite woman with elaborately braided hair, picks up the phone and dials an extension: “She’s here.”

A moment later, Darin comes through a side door, flanked by four other men in ill-fitting suits with badges clipped to their waists. They see me, and then Saul.

“Katz,” says the tallest of the group. “Come with me.”

Saul obliges. The tall man holds open the side door, and two others follow Saul through it.

“You’re okay,” says Darin. It is a statement, not a question. His face is stiff.

“I’m fine,” I say.

“We need to ask you some questions,” he says. Then: “Please.”

I nod and am ushered out of the reception area, through a waist-high door, and past a row of lockers. Uniformed officers, with their guns on their hips, seem to be lurking around every corner, staring. Everyone is tense. We pass a series of doors with tiny windows—interrogation rooms—and I see Saul and the three men in one. Is that where I’m going? My lower intestines ignite, sending what feels like blue fire through my bloodstream. It’s a funny condition, acute anxiety. It can murmur low in your stomach for days, weeks even, with no apparent cause. Am I worried about school? My boyfriend? Paying rent? I used to lie in bed and try to identify the source, but the feeling defied logic or categorization. My stepmom, also a worrier, maintains that anxiety is our body’s way of keeping us from danger. It’s telling you something, she’d say. Which sounds logical, but breaks down when the feeling buzzes on and off constantly and seems to have little to do with what’s actually happening. I roll my mind back over the last three days. I don’t think I’ve done anything illegal, but I am alone in here. If I am not brave, they will devour me.

Darin opens a door and motions for me to enter a small break-room kitchen.

“Please sit down,” he says, gesturing to a folding table and chairs set. The room smells like burnt popcorn and hand soap.

One of the men stays outside and the other enters with Darin, who shuts the door behind him and then sits down next to me.

“This is Captain Weber,” says Darin. “This is his station house. He is working the Mendelssohn case.”

I nod.

“I’d like you to tell me and Detective Spinelli exactly how you met Saul Katz,” says the captain.

“I met him Friday, the day they found Rivka Mendelssohn. I had been assigned to go to the Mendelssohn house to get quotes and he was there.”

“Had you ever met him before?” The captain is leaning toward me. I can see the tiny black hairs growing out of his nose. He has a deeply wrinkled face.

“No. Why would you ask that?”

“I’ll ask the questions for now, all right, young lady?”

Oh boy.

“Had you ever met him before?”

“No,” I say. “I said that.”

The captain looks at Darin.

“You’re saying you had no connection to Saul Katz before you just ‘ran into him’ at a murder victim’s house on Friday?”

Now I look at Darin. “What the fuck?” I say. “You’re the ones with a rogue cop. I’m a reporter. I was doing my job.”

“I’m running a murder investigation, ma’am.” Ha. Young lady to ma’am in less than a minute.

“Are you?”

“Is that what Saul Katz told you? That we’re not running an investigation? Did you ask anyone at my department anything about this case at all? Because none of my people have heard of you.”

“I’ve spoken to DCPI…”

“Have you? Who, exactly, have you spoken to?”

I didn’t get the name of the tall man at the scene. Then, he was nothing more to me than DCPI.

“I’m sorry,” I say as earnestly as I can muster. “I’m not sure what Darin told you, but I met Saul Katz on Friday night. He said he had been called in as a liaison to the Orthodox community on this case. He told me he usually worked in property crimes. Is that true?”

“Yes,” says the captain.

“But he’s not a liaison?”

“He’s not anything anymore,” says the captain. “Except a suspect.”

“Why is he a suspect?”

The captain sighs. He is sick of me. “He is a suspect because he is attempting to manipulate the investigation. He is a suspect because he knew the victim. And because if not for the miracle of modern medicine, Saul Katz would be in prison for murder.”

On cue, Darin hands the captain a folder. “Would you like to see what Saul Katz did to a sixty-year-old man?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer, and of course, I don’t get up. He opens the file and with his fingertips spreads out four 8
×
10 glossy close-up photos of a man in a hospital bed. The man’s face is almost unrecognizable as a face. Both eyes are purple and swollen shut. There are metal rods that look like scaffolding attached to either side of his head, which is shaved; a fresh red surgery scar runs like train tracks up his skull.

“He’ll never walk again,” says the captain. “Severe brain damage. Saul beat him into unconsciousness. With his bare hands.”

I’m not sure what to say. Protesting that the man in the pictures may have intimidated witnesses in a felony case seems imprudent.

“Tell me the truth about your relationship with Saul Katz,” says the captain.

“My relationship?” And then I realize: he’s talking about my mother.

“Saul Katz knew my mother before I was born,” I say. “She grew up in Borough Park. Her family was—is—Hasidic. I’m not sure how they knew each other, but they did. But then my mother met my father, and they moved to Florida, where I was born. So I never met him.”

“I’ll check all this out,” says the captain. “I’d like to talk to your mother.”

“Can’t help you with that.”

“You’re not in touch?”

“We are not in touch.”

“Is she deceased?”

“Could be. I have no idea. She left us when I was six months old. I haven’t heard from her since.”

The captain pauses a moment. “I see,” he says. “I assume Saul Katz will tell me the same story.”

“It’s the truth,” I say.

“Something Katz seems to have trouble with,” says Darin.

The captain gets up.

“Before you go,” I say, “could you tell me where you are in the investigation into the Mendelssohn murder?”

The captain raises a bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrow.

“Have you interviewed her husband? Or her boyfriend?”

“Her…?” The captain catches himself before finishing his sentence and positively revealing that he had no idea the woman whose death he is supposedly investigating had been having an affair. I don’t even try to hide my smile.