Invisible City (9 page)

“Sorry,” he says, red-faced and out of breath. “That was quick. Did you … Do you want…?”

I kiss his lips and hold his face in my hands. There are few moments in life where I feel more powerful than when I’ve just made a man come. I don’t orgasm easily—maybe it’s the pills, or maybe just my general anxiety about letting my guard down in front of people—but tonight I don’t care. What feels good in this moment is being in control.

We fall asleep and wake up around ten the next morning. He goes up the block for coffee and returns with a copy of the
Trib
.

The front-page photo is of “Porn Dad.” “Porn Dad” is how the newspaper refers to a man named Frank White who was arrested on Thursday for selling pornographic pictures of his girlfriend’s son and daughter to his friends and several continents of other online perverts. The story got even bigger yesterday when somebody realized that “Porn Mom,” whose name is Melissa Dryden, is actually Missy Sanders, former “hot daughter” on an ABC sitcom that ran between 1984 and 1986. She did a guest spot on
Melrose Place
in the early 1990s, then made some soft porn before disappearing. Pages three and four are the spread, which includes one sidebar of screen shots from poor porn mom’s Cinemax days, with plot summaries of films including
Ecstasy Island 2: Pleasures in Paradise
and
Snow Bunny: Wet in Winter,
and another with a couple shots from her teen sitcom days.

Rivka Mendelssohn gets four inches on page seven:

WOMAN’S BODY FOUND IN BROOKLYN SCRAP YARD

By Rebekah Roberts

The body of a Brooklyn woman was found in a Gowanus scrap yard on Friday. Rivka Mendelssohn, 30, of Borough Park was discovered by workers at Smith Street Scrap around 9
A.M.

“I saw her foot first,” said an operator who declined to give his name. “Everybody starting pointing and yelling and running toward the pile.”

Mendelssohn dangled nearly 50 feet above the ground for several hours before employees and emergency service workers retrieved her body.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said another worker on the scene. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. I just kept thinking how cold she must be.”

According to family members, Mendelssohn had been missing since Tuesday.

“She was a good mother,” said Mendelssohn’s sister-in-law. “The children are very sad.”

Close. Someone embellished the quote from the operator and made it seem as though we had quotes from two workers, instead of two quotes from one. My name is on the piece, but I didn’t actually write a single word. It took me by surprise when I first started at the
Trib
and learned that being a reporter meant that you go get the story, or part of the story, and then call in what you’ve learned. Someone else writes the story and either shares the byline with the reporter or, as in this case, just gives it away.

Tony and I turn on the television and settle into watching Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell in
Overboard,
which is playing on TBS. The radiator hisses and heats the room. I slept badly, and yesterday feels like a dream. The edges run together. The body and the black hats, Miriam, the little boy. Did he know that his mother was the one hanging there? Did he know as he stood by the coffeepot that she was gone?

At noon Iris appears, and just as she’s walking in, my phone rings. I get up from the futon and see that it’s a New York number I don’t recognize. Maybe it’s Saul, I think. Maybe he’s got my Aviva Kagan with him. Maybe they’re right outside.

“Rebekah, it’s Saul Katz.”

I go to the window in my bedroom and wrap my arm around my chest, pressing in on my manic heart.

“Is everything okay?”

“I have something I’d like to show you. I know it’s the weekend, but you may be able to use it for an article.”

“Okay…,” I say. He is not with Aviva. But he could be; he will be. Maybe. If I am patient.

“Would you like me to pick you up?” he asks.

I give him my address and he says he will be there in thirty minutes.

“If you have one, wear a long skirt,” he says. “It will help to fit in.”

After I hang up, I go into the bathroom and lean over the toilet. Something wants to come up, but it isn’t food. I gag, tears forming in my eyes. I flush, and fling cold water on my face.

“Was that work?” asks Tony when I come back out.

“That was Saul.”

“Does he have a scoop?”

Iris is dumping her purse and her coat on the table. “Who’s Saul?”

“Saul is a cop,” I say. “He helped me out on the stakeout last night. He knew my mom.”

“Really.” Iris looks sideways at Tony.

“I told him.”

“Oh good,” says Iris, coming to sit on the opposite side of the futon from Tony. I am still standing.

“Saul is a detective and he’s Orthodox and he was called to help the police translate when they notified the family of the scrap yard woman that she was dead,” says Tony.

Iris looks at me. “And you just … ran into him?”

“He recognized me. He said I looked just like her.”

“Jesus,” says Iris.

“I know.”

“This is strange, right?” Iris asks. “Or am I just negative because I’m hungover?”

“Borough Park is like a small town,” says Tony. “There are thousands of Jews, but there are far fewer families. He could have known her.”

“Oh, he knew her,” I say, thinking about the way he was staring at me. “Anyway, apparently he’s got some information for me. On the story.”

I dress and tell Iris not to worry. Tony walks me downstairs. Saul’s Chevy Malibu is idling outside the door. Tony gives me a hug and says he’ll call me later. I open the car door and slide into the seat beside Saul.

“Thank you for coming,” says Saul. He’s wearing the same thing he was last night, a cheap white button-down shirt, and a coat and pants that are both black but not quite the same hue. He looks like he hasn’t slept, though I probably do, too.

“How are you?” I ask.

“I read your story.”

I want to say it’s not really my story, that I didn’t write it. But before I do, it occurs to me that whether or not I actually put the words together, my name is on it—and thus I am responsible for it. Or I should have been. “It was short.”

“Will you write another article?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t usually get to make that decision.”

We drive in silence for a few minutes. Just as I am about to ask where we’re going, Saul speaks.

“My supervisors do not know I’ve contacted you,” he says. “I have some information you can use to write a story—maybe many stories—about Rivka Mendelssohn. But you cannot use my name in print. I am a police official with knowledge of the investigation.”

This is not what I expected him to say. But I suppose it makes sense that we establish the rules of our interaction early. Yes, he is the man who provided the first morsel of actual information about my mother I’d been given in, oh, twenty years, but he is also a cop and I am a reporter.

I’ve used anonymous sources before. In my Section 8 fire series, I kept the secretary at the landlord’s office completely out of the story, even though she was the one who confirmed to me that she had seen him give his teenage nephews seventy-five dollars each to install the smoke detectors and failed to check their work. In school my professors warned against allowing people to go off the record or remain anonymous. Once someone is off the record, it’s hard to get them to go back on, they said. And anonymity undermines trust between the reader and the newspaper. Reporters don’t take a formal oath to do no harm or follow a set of ethical guidelines while performing our job—actually we don’t take any kind of oath, or test, at all. I had a professor who thought journalists should have to be licensed, like lawyers and accountants. Then, he said, we’d get more respect. I’m actually not against the idea at all, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s not going to happen. And who would we be swearing to do no harm to? Our source? Our reader? Our editor? Ourselves?

“That works,” I say.

“It is very important that we find who killed Rivka Mendelssohn. If the newspaper keeps writing about her, it might help.”

“Really?” Usually cops say the opposite. “What makes you think that?”

“Well, to begin with, Aron Mendelssohn has not been questioned. You always bring the husband in. Always. And he hasn’t been in. Which could mean a couple things, but what I think it means is that he has exerted pressure.”

“Pressure?”

“The precinct has to deal with this community delicately.”

“Why?”

“They give money, for one thing. And they vote in blocks. There is an informal agreement that the ultra-Orthodox are mostly law-abiding and can police themselves.…”

I interrupt him. “Until somebody dies.”

“You’d think so.”

We ride in silence a few moments more.

“Do you think he did it?”

“Aron Mendelssohn?” Saul considers this. “I don’t know. Aron Mendelssohn is a wealthy man. His father donated most of the money to build the yeshiva on Ocean Parkway. He is a business owner, of course. The fact that his wife was found dead at his business is suspicious, but doesn’t necessarily point to him as the killer. He’s never been in trouble with the law, but most Hasidim haven’t. He needs to be questioned. And not bringing him in tells me the investigators are thinking about things other than the most efficient, effective ways to solve the case. It also tells the community that they can stay behind closed doors and pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Is that what they’ll do?”

“It’s what they do when it comes to domestic violence and mental illness and sexual abuse. All of which occurs in the community, just like in any other community. But here the shame of coming forward is compounded. Generally, Jews in this community believe that speaking to the authorities about another Jew is a sin against the community. It’s
mesirah,
they say.”

“Mesirah?”

“Mesirah. It’s Yiddish. It means reporting on your fellow Jew. In the past, in Europe, if a Jew was arrested and sent to prison, he would be killed there. So it was every Jew’s duty to keep other Jews out of prison, which means not talking to the police.”

“Even now?”

“Even now.”

“But, this is a murder. You can’t just not talk.”

“You can if the police don’t ask you to.”

“But, won’t someone
want
to talk? Like Miriam? Her sister-in-law was found in a dump.”

“You saw what happened when Aron saw Miriam talking to you,” says Saul. “I’m surprised she risked it.”

It’s a strange thing to say, given that he’s the one who took me to speak to her. He was pushing things even then. Did he know she would talk to me?

“Yeah, but I’m a reporter. I don’t have any actual power. The police have power. They can make you talk.”

“Maybe. Actual power depends on perception of power, to some extent. Many people would say that with access to the minds of a million readers, you had more power than I did there. But really, in that situation, neither of us had actual power. Aron Mendelssohn had actual power.”

“Yeah, but … what about the law? Couldn’t a judge compel people to talk? Contempt of court or something? Interfering with an investigation?”

“Yes, that could happen. But the fact that the investigators haven’t brought the husband in yet is a sign that they are not going hard at this. So is the fact that they didn’t take any evidence with them when they were in the house last night.”

“You’re not an investigator?”

Saul shakes his head. “Not on this case. Not officially. Like I said, I was called in to assist last night.”

“Do you get called in a lot?”

“Every month or two. Usually as a translator.”

“They really can’t speak English?”

“Most can, but many—the elderly and children, for example—have trouble. For boys, their general education ends at eleven or twelve. Then they begin Torah instruction, which is conducted in Yiddish.”

“And the city is okay with that?”

“The city tends to stay out of religious education.”

“And then what?”

“And then they marry. They find a job, usually within the community. As a teacher, or a clerk. Many Hasidim own property, so real estate management.”

“What about the girls?”

“It is different for the girls.”

“Obviously.”

Saul looks at me. I’m not used to being around people who are so serious. I think I’ve hurt his feelings.

“Sorry, it just seems a little weird.”

“No, no,” he says, again. Then he pauses and smiles. “You look like your mother but…”

“But what?”

“You are very different.”

“How?” He’s set my stomach off. I squirm in my seat.

“She was not, not so … I think you are smarter than she is.”

It’s not what I expected him to say. I look at him, but he keeps his gaze forward. We’ve left Gowanus and are headed south toward Borough Park. I’ve never thought about how I stacked up to my mom intellectually. I feel more proud than offended, which is what I’m sure Saul meant for me to feel, but I’m frustrated by my complete inability to add anything to a discussion I would love to have. Was my mother smart? I have no idea.

“You said ‘is.’ Is she alive?”

“Your mother?” Saul sounds surprised. “You don’t…? I’m sorry.” He feels bad, I realize immediately. Like it took him until this moment to realize that she really did disappear from our lives twenty-two years ago. “Her family moved upstate near Kiryas Joel many years ago.”

Kiryas Joel is the name of the town in the Catskills where a sect of super-Orthodox Hasids live. I’ve read about it. The articles said it was pretty bad: Rabbis having to see women’s “clean” panties to certify they were off their periods and thus safe to re-welcome into society. Average family size triple, quadruple the rest of us. Most people on food stamps. One article said it was the poorest town in America.

“Do you still see her?”

“No,” he says. He’s not exactly wistful, but almost. “The last time I saw your mother was more than twenty years ago, just before she moved to Israel.”