Rabbi Gabrielle Ignites a Tempest (4 page)

Bar Jehoshua's uniform was pressed and
starched. Though she outranked Zabronski, she conveyed a feminine
softness as she steered the conversation to a report balanced in
her hands as if she were testing it upon the scales of justice. "A
lot going on out in the desert these days," she said, observing
Zabronski. "I want to ask you about this dead Bedouin. Don't these
people usually bury their dead quickly?"

"Usually," Zabronski answered. "This fellow
was probably a shepherd working some distance from his tribal
encampment. My pathologist thinks he bled to death hours after
being shot."

Bar Jehoshua dropped the file to her desk and
leaned forward before saying, "That's why I asked you to come here.
The army and police don't always cooperate the way they should, but
on this matter I'd like you to be in the loop. We think there's
more to this than a simple murder. One of our photo analysts
working on drone flyovers discovered a suspicious car in the Qumran
area three days before this Bedouin youth was brought in. When we
studied photos from the previous days, we found it was a Hyundai
SUV hidden under camouflage netting. Unfortunately, by the time we
realized what we were dealing with, it was gone. What does that
suggest?"

"Terrorists don't park their vehicles in the
same place on consecutive nights. They like to move them around to
confuse us. Perhaps the Hyundai belonged to an amateur archeologist
scrounging around Qumran to get rich."

"Possible," Bar Jehoshua said, “but I
suspected terrorists, so I sent out a team with mountain climbing
experience. My boys struck gold on the second day. An unexplored
cave, only a half kilometer from where this victim was found."

"I haven't read anything about a new cave at
Qumran," Zabronski's voice betrayed his surprise.

"And you won't. One word about this in the
press and the desert will be swarming with treasure hunters. On
their heels will follow legions of lawyers telling the IDF what it
can do and what it can't. As soon as Orthodox members of the
Cabinet learn about a new cave with archeological implications,
they'll throw up barriers to all investigation. Then the prime
minister's office will start issuing instructions to me."

Like so many people who worked in the region,
Zabronski was an amateur archeologist. "
Nu
? What's with this cave?"

"Itamar Arad's people from the Antiquities
Authority are working there as we speak. They're even more
interested in keeping this secret than the army."

"Any scrolls?" Zabronski pressed on with more
than casual interest.

"You know I can't answer that. What I can say
is there was a tarpaulin camouflaging the entrance. And remains of
a recent oil fire, so we know others were there before us. We
discovered a hole in the tarp from a small-caliber bullet. We also
found two slugs from an AK-47 and three from a 9-mm weapon embedded
in the chalk wall. There might be a connection with your
Bedouin."

"Not my Bedouin, Galya. It's my job to
investigate and I will, but I can tell you right now that I've got
better things to do. These people don't enjoy us messing around in
their business. Once I solved a homosexual murder in one of their
camps. The tribe got hold of an Israeli lawyer and lodged a
complaint with my superior officer. I was suspended for six months.
I'm telling you, we're better off without this. These people don't
need our help, thank you."

"Have you no shame, Zvi?" she joked with an
artificial grin. "Should it matter whether the victim is a Bedouin
or a Jew? Isn't it our duty to bring all murderers to justice?"

"Tell that to our Palestinian neighbors. And
if I find the killer, will Arabs thank us for it?"

"Perhaps not, but I'd like you to consider a
link between the Qumran cave and your victim."

"I will," he said and stood up to leave,
thinking to himself that he had made no promise other than to roll
the matter around in his mind. As far as he was concerned, the
sooner he was finished with this case, the better.

CHAPTER TWO

Silence. Nothing but blank silence, if that's
what you call not receiving expected e-mail. Rabbi Gabrielle Lewyn
stared at her computer screen with what had begun as hopeful
waiting and dissolved over a period of three weeks into
disappointment, frustration, and eventually, anger. On January 17,
Tim Matternly had e-mailed her from Israel in a terse computerese
he usually deplored. Normally, he insisted on using formal grammar,
but this time he had abandoned such formalities, abbreviating
whenever possible, as if in a great hurry. No capital letters or
punctuation. His message said that he was pursuing
the discovery of a lifetime
and promised more details
ASAP. But damned if nothing followed into the second week of
February. Surely, she thought, he could have found a spare moment
to tap out a few words. No one on the planet, even the president of
the United States, is
that
busy. She wrote
him daily, at first politely requesting and later demanding a
response. He seldom refused what she asked, and his silence after
announcing the
discovery of a lifetime
was
particularly puzzling. A single explanation came to mind—Tim was in
trouble.

After several more days of frustration,
feminine fears leached into her consciousness. Had he found another
woman? That was a major risk when living with a man without being
married. Perhaps a younger lover had swept him off his feet. Such
premonitions turned fearsome, then bitter. A half-dozen phone calls
to Tim's apartment in Jerusalem produced no response, despite
imploring messages left on his answering machine. Finally, the
voice-mail ran out of memory. She resolved to wait another two days
before taking the only course of action that promised a resolution,
flying from Chicago to Israel.

When Gabby Lewyn and Tim Matternly had first met as
divinity students a dozen years before, they became secret lovers.
Because at the time he was headed for a career in the Presbyterian
ministry and she in the congregational rabbinate, they refused to
let their relationship mature into a marital commitment. How time
proved their thinking wrong! What they liked to remember as nothing
more than a burst of hormonal puppy love continued off-and-on for
seven years. They met secretly when they could, indulged themselves
in wonderful lovemaking, fought, made love again, broke up, and
then reunited, only to repeat the process. Each time they came
together, they renewed a pledge: never, never to actually fall in
love. Their game plan was for Gabby to find a Jewish husband and
Tim, a Christian wife. When suitable new lovers arrived, a mere
signal from the other would trigger an immediate end to their
sexual relationship, if not their friendship. No hard feelings and
no lingering sentimentalities. Just a treasure chest of wonderful
memories.

At the end of the seventh year, their resolve
was tested in a Manhattan hotel. While waiting for Tim to arrive,
Gabby brushed her teeth and blow
 
dried her hair, which periodically required
light coloring to refresh its natural brunette. During a previous
rabbinical conference in St. Louis, she stole away from the
meetings to shop in Union Station Mall. However out of character,
she bought herself a diaphanous nightgown and see-through bra at
Victoria’s Secret. Back in Washington, she tried them on before a
full-length mirror, judging herself to look utterly ridiculous. It
would take truckloads of seductive props to transform this
self-conscious professional woman into anything resembling a sex
kitten. But that night in New York, she wore them anyway.

Tim Matternly saw things differently.
"Ravishing," he declared once inside her room, as she revealed
herself in see
 
through lingerie. She
stood high on her toes to kiss his bewhiskered chin. His arms
interlocked with hers as she led him toward the bed where they
sat.

"When you called me on Wednesday, I was at
dinner with a friend," Tim said.

"If your friend is female, I don’t want to
talk about her. I'll only get jealous."

"A woman I’ve been dating for several months
now."

"Do you sleep with her? I wouldn’t like it,
though I might be able to countenance a one
 
night stand. But if you’re sleeping with her on
a regular basis, I’ll find a bridge to jump off of. What are we
talking about here in the Upper East Side? Queensboro? Or is it the
Tri
 
Boro? I always get them confused.
So are you sleeping with her regularly, Tim?"

He nodded to avoid actually saying that he
was.

Despite a determined effort to resist,
Gabby's eyes glazed with tears. "She better be a great screw
because I don’t want to give lessons."

Tim’s voice dropped a half-octave and lost
its customary joviality. "I've dreaded this moment. For all these
years, I feared you making a similar speech to me. Once I had a
nightmare that we were in a hotel room just like this, where you
said how you had found a man who’s crazy about you, with a dick
three inches longer than mine, someone rich, successful, and
smarter than you, which is somewhere between a double and triple
genius. In the nightmare, I’m the one looking for a bridge to jump
off."

Her eyes fell over painted toenails, then
focused on the beginning of a bunion behind the big toe where her
foot rubbed against the inside of her shoes.

"But you don’t get off so easily," he
continued. "You’ve managed to screw up every relationship I’ve had
with other women. Each time I date someone and matriculate through
the get
 
to
 
know
 
you phase, I
compare her with you and nobody matches up. So I invent excuses to
end everything. What I always wanted was you and what I could never
have has always been you. Sure, we make wonderful love. It’s always
great until we separate. Then it feels like falling off a cliff.
For years, I’ve known that if I couldn’t break this cycle, I’d have
to commit myself to a loony bin. Sally’s my chance. I hope you
understand that."

She untangled her feet and rotated forward on
her knees. Her nightgown fell open. With both hands, she held Tim’s
head, drawing him close and caressing his eyes, once, twice, then
smothering them with her lips. "Hey, sailor, what d’ya think of my
new outfit?"

"It barely covers the most beautiful woman
I’ve ever known."

"I appreciate that," she replied. "If I
didn’t believe that we’d be in the same pickle a month from now,
I’d strip off these shreds of nothing and jump you. But that would
only make me cry and I don't want to. Timmy, you’re my witness to
this extraordinary act of bravery. If anybody asks, tell them that
Gabby Lewyn didn’t shed a single tear."

He wanted to say something soothing, but
nothing came to mind.

"Forget about that bridge. When you leave,
I’m going to sit on this bed until I fall asleep. And when I wake
up tomorrow morning, I’m going get up and move on. No red eyes. No
self
 
pity."

"We’ve prevented each other from finding new
lovers; somebody will snap you up in an instant," Tim said, his
eyes dropping to the bedspread.

"Perhaps," she replied without
conviction.

Gabby let Tim walk out of her life, rationalizing
that their romance had been destined to end the very moment it
began. As the friend she promised to remain, she attended his
wedding to Sally Goldsmith at the Central Presbyterian Church in
New York City, hiding tears behind dark glasses. Two years later,
by the time she learned that his marriage had floundered, she was
herself a married woman.

Eight years after their breakup—and after Gabby had
lost her husband in an avoidable, and therefore thoroughly tragic,
scuba diving accident at St. Lucia—she resigned as senior rabbi of
Congregation Ohav Shalom in Washington D.C. and moved to Chicago.
Her reentry into Tim Matternly's life caught him at a propitious
moment, as if he had been waiting all the intervening years for her
return. As in their past life together, she loved his humor in
moments of stress, his passion for biblical history and, above all,
his cooking. His artichokes, poached in hot, but not boiling, water
to the perfect degree of tenderness, each leaf decoratively cut for
easy pulling, and served with his secret mustard vinaigrette, sent
her into culinary rapture. He, on the other hand, loved how her
smile punched endearing dimples in her cheeks and how her eyes
sparkled mischievously when she told tall stories. But mostly, he
adored how she animated stagnant ideas and fashioned them into
living adventures, always game to jump into situations way over her
head.

After enrolling in the department of biblical
studies at the University of Chicago as a PhD candidate, she moved
into his Hyde Park home with him, two blocks from Lake Michigan.
When he was in Israel pursuing his research, she would travel to
Jerusalem every other month to stay with him in a rented apartment
on Ussishkin Street.

While spiritual experiences drove fellow clerics
into God's service, Gabby had entered rabbinical school not because
she felt a calling, but because she wanted to help others. When she
completed her studies six years later, the ministry she discovered
waiting for her was not what she expected. Conducting an
interminable parade of liturgy and officiating at what seemed to be
an endless series of life-cycle events, from circumcisions and
baby-namings to funerals, left her empty. Yet, however repetitive
and exhausting this work, it proved a marvelous springboard into
community service where her passion to help others was fulfilled.
That was on the positive side. But wherever and whenever she
ventured from her rabbinical duties into communal service, she
found herself taking positions that many in her flock refused to
support.