Long Island Noir (15 page)

“I thought we weren’t meeting up until progress was made on tracking down the killer,” Pamela said.

“Now it’s Morris’s and Lyssa’s killer.”

Marky barked twice when Pamela put down the phone. When her dog seemed to grasp the situation better than she did, she knew how much trouble she’d gotten herself into.

While Iris was spoon-feeding her alibi to Pamela, Lyssa Kamp had gotten herself killed in her car. A blunt object of some kind had smashed the woman’s head from the back as she moved into the driveway of her own house. Stephen’s nephew, who was married to a low-level patrol cop who supposedly knew how to get the right people to leak information at the right time, said the going theory was a carjacker. Stephen thought otherwise.

“What carjacker hides in a car at a cemetery and then stays down for the entire car ride?” he scoffed. They sat in Morris’s old office, which was now Pamela’s, except it was still full of her predecessor’s furniture, pictures, and files. No one, least of all Pamela, had had time to change anything.

“I suppose it’s possible,” Pamela conceded, “but it’s pretty unlikely.”

“And you shouldn’t have left the cemetery when you did. There were still a good half a dozen board members remaining. Any one of them could have jumped into the car to take Lyssa out.”

Pamela’s shoulders sagged. “The fight ended. Aline and her son had already walked back to their car. Lyssa was on her way to her car when I left. And need I remind you, Stephen, I used to be a policewoman, but I’m not anymore, and there were no police on hand at the funeral. There are limits to what I could and can do.”

“Now, Pamela, do you want to be
shul
president or not?”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. Stephen sighed in dramatic fashion. “I suppose that’s the wrong question. But someone needs to lead.”

“Well, why not you? You certainly want to control this situation, Stephen.”

“Because the city wants to shut us down!” he cried. “Because Morris Cohn fucked us in the worst possible way. Iris is leaving because of his fiscal irresponsibility.”

“She told you she was resigning?”

“Of course. Iris called me before she went out to your house.”

For Pamela, this was the final straw. She laid out all of Iris’s documents on Morris’s desk. “You know what, Stephen, I don’t need this headache. I don’t want this responsibility. I just wanted to be a good Jew and a good volunteer, but this
shul
is full of vipers, most of all you. I’m done. Goodbye.”

“Wait a minute! You can’t leave!”

But Pamela was deaf to Stephen’s cries, storming out of the office and ready to escape to the refuge that was her crappy little car.

Until she realized she had miscalculated. And to correct her miscalculation, she would have to search Morris’s office.

It was foolish, but Pamela couldn’t go back into the synagogue while Stephen was still around. She could grovel later, if need be, but now was a time to let the man stew in his own power juice. And for what, when he didn’t even want to run things officially? No, Pamela realized, Stephen Pascal much preferred power from a small remove, twisting the puppet strings of those, like herself, who were just figureheads for the real leaders.

“Miss Rosenstein?” said a voice from behind.

Pamela snapped out of her increasingly rage-filled thoughts and found her composure. “Yes?” she asked. It was Stephen’s secretary, Marsha, who at six-foot-two towered over Pamela and, though twenty years older, moved with the quickness of a cheetah, judging by how short a time it took to catch up.

“There’s a phone call for you, and I saw you leaving—”

“I’ll take it. Thanks.” Here was Pamela’s ready-made excuse to return to the
shul
. “And make sure I’m not to be disturbed, especially by your boss.”

“Of course,” said Marsha, sprinting ahead.

Back in Morris’s office—she would never think of it as hers—Pamela shut the door and got to work on the drawers. The top one was unlocked, the rest were not, but latent lock-picking skills she had learned on a weekend training session during her rookie year as a cop came back, albeit with a significant amount of rust. She was certain everyone, especially Stephen, could hear her drawer ministrations, but she did not care. She had to get at whatever was inside the desk.

At first Pamela couldn’t contain her disappointment. The top drawer was filled with junk, tons of it, in the form of a ripped
tallis
, a set of
tefillin
with so much dust they had to have been almost as old as Morris, an ashtray full of moldy cigarette butts and half-empty matchsticks. Even if there could be some useful clues to glean, it wouldn’t help Pamela now. She didn’t have the weeks required for proper evidence and DNA testing at her disposal.

She was about to open the second drawer when the office phone rang again. Shit. Pamela had been so absorbed she’d forgotten about the call Marsha told her was coming. She picked up and tried her best to be polite, to tamp down her irritation.

“Is this Pamela Rosenstein?” said a timid voice on the other line.

“Yes, may I help you?”

“I’m not sure … but I hope so. I called the office and they said you’re in Morris’s office now, that you’ve taken over as president?”

Pamela held the receiver away from her ear, exhaled slowly, and then went back on the line. “Yes, that’s true.”

“I’m sorry it’s taking so long to get to the point, but it’s just … well, I was with Morris that day.”

“Which day?” Pamela knew damn well which day, but she needed confirmation.

“The day he was … the day he died.” The woman’s voice was like broken glass. “I need to talk to someone and I gather you’re the person to talk to so …”

Pamela knew an opening when she had one. “Where should we meet?”

“There’s a coffee shop, Dinero’s, on the corner of Middle Neck and Northern. I’ll be there one hour from now.”

“How will I know what you look like?”

The woman laughed bitterly. “Believe me, I’m hard to miss.”

She rang off and Pamela held her head in her hands. Dinero’s was a five-minute drive and she had thirty minutes, tops, to conduct a search that should really take two hours. But it had to be done. She rifled through more endless junk until she reached the last drawer. The clock ticked and the lock could not be picked. Frustrated, Pamela whacked her purse against the drawer. There was a click.

And true to form, the effect was Open Sesame all the way. A cursory look revealed facts, figures, numbers. Pamela grabbed all that could fit in her purse and rushed out of the office, past a glaring Marsha, and back to her little car.

And when Pamela reached Dinero’s there was some crime scene tape waiting for her.

Since Pamela had no badge to flash and the authority of synagogue presidency didn’t carry quite the same weight as being a homicide detective, she didn’t get much out of the cops at the scene. One, however, did allow the tape had been put up just ten minutes ago, after a hooded figure walked into the shop, took out a gun, and fired three bullets into the head of an elderly woman with a significant facial deformity.

“Jesus Christ,” Pamela gasped involuntarily.

“Yeah,” said the cop, brushing back blond bangs from his eyes, “seriously cold shit.” His eyes narrowed on Pamela’s. “Why are you so interested, anyway?”

In that moment, Pamela elected to keep the phone call to herself. She’d tell the police on her terms, but not before. “Occupational hazard,” she allowed. “I used to work homicide in the city.”

“No fooling? Where?”

“The 8-1.”

The cop’s ensuing grin was out of place. “I used to live not far from there. It’s cleaned up some, but back when I was around … hoo boy.”

“Hoo boy, indeed,” said Pamela, smiling without mirth.

“But you still can’t go in there.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

The conversation was over, but Pamela stuck around and let her ears be her guide. From careful eavesdropping and casual exchanges with customers who’d been questioned and were leaving the premises, she learned the woman’s name: Esther Danzig. The name rang faintly in Pamela’s mind, but she couldn’t place why right away. And why had the woman wanted to talk with Pamela? More to the point, was the facial deformity—a bright red birthmark covering a third of her face—what Esther meant over the phone with respect to recognition, or did she know she was marked?

Pamela could guess what had likely happened, though. The woman, Esther, was one of Morris’s financial victims. Trusted him with her money and lost it all, and when she found out, she confronted him. Pamela doubted she had been ready to confess to murder; but whatever it was she’d intended to confess worried the killer enough that she had to be shut up. Just like Lyssa. Just like Morris.

The documents, the damn documents. Pamela felt oppressed by the milling around, the crime scene tape, the endless chatter. She had to double-check what she thought she saw and the only way was to get in her car, pull over, and spend quality time poring over figures that might give her the answers she needed.

She made her way to the car, checking the backseat first. If someone was going around carjacking people, even if that theory didn’t hold water, she didn’t want to fall victim to stupidity. Satisfied she was well and truly alone, Pamela drove to another coffee shop down the way, checking her mirrors in true paranoid fashion and pulling into a spot in the very back of the shop.

The coffee at this place was horrible, unlike the frou-frou stuff Dinero’s served, but it was requisite fuel while Pamela contended with Morris’s documents. As Iris said, there were the Grand Cayman accounts, registered in other people’s names: Morris, Esther, Lyssa, Stuart Cohn, Aline Cohn, Henri Durocher. All that money washed away, never to return to American soil.

Pamela now knew what would come next. Lyssa hadn’t been carjacked, and neither had her car left the driveway. She hoped to hell that Marky would prove himself to be an excellent guard dog instead of the softy she knew he really was and loved him for.

Pamela drove quickly but not so fast as to trigger a speed gun. She dialed Stephen on his cell phone and informed him she was close to a solution.

“Are you sure?” He sounded incredulous.

“Very sure,” said Pamela, “but you’re not going to like it.”

Pamela parked her car across the street from the driveway, and when she emerged from the vehicle, kept her gun hand free. It was in her purse, but within easy reach. Darkness had come quickly in Great Neck, as it often did in March, right before spring. Normally this would be a disadvantage, but not for Pamela, who wanted to enhance the element of surprise. She crouched down and slithered through the grass up to the front door.

As she expected, the door was open. What worried Pamela most was that Marky didn’t make a sound. Her heart began to plummet.

Pamela pushed the door open, hoping like hell the oil she’d put on the door had worked and it wouldn’t squeak. No sound. Good. The front hall was still dark, as she’d left it, but it was quiet, too quiet. She moved to her purse, took out her gun—

And Marky barked, loud and clear.

Pamela hit the lights. Her dog stood on top of the prone body of a feeble-looking old man who had bite marks in his back; his right leg was splayed out at an unnatural angle. Marky wasn’t moving but boy was he barking with triumph!

The man on the floor had the audacity to say, “Get that fucking dog off of me.”

“I don’t think so, Henri. Who knows what you might do?”

“My leg is broken! I can’t do anything!”

“All the more reason to let other people deal with the matter. You broke into my house. If I search you, will I find the gun that killed Esther and Lyssa? And Morris?”

Henri Durocher had the grace to stop talking. Instead, he howled in pain, and Marky barked louder.

Pamela wanted to scoop up her dog and declare him a hero, but she had three things to do first: contact the police and report a burglary in progress, get an ambulance for the fallen rich man, and call Stephen.

The ambulance had come and gone and the cops were securing the scene and peppering Pamela with questions when Stephen arrived. Pamela’s story made his face turn several shades paler, and his eyes misted over.

“What a terrible shame,” he said.

“I think Henri found out he wasn’t so rich after all and Morris was much richer than he ought to be.”

“And really, no one had any money.” Stephen Pascal sighed. “But for Henri it would have been the worst blow of all.” Pamela could only nod as Stephen continued. “I think we all forgot that
shul
politics isn’t a shell game, but Morris in particular let this get away from him.” He looked at Pamela beseechingly.

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Stephen. But I’m not cut out to run the synagogue. Don’t fight the inevitable.”

“I’ll tell you what’s inevitable. The average age of a congregant is sixty-nine. The youngsters are leaving, just like they always do, but it’s so much worse now. We have renovations we can’t afford and expenses mounting up. In Great Neck! The community was supposed to support us.”

“There are a lot of things communities are supposed to support,” Pamela pointed out. “Libraries. Firehouses. Roads. And all of that’s falling away, turning decrepit. Look at Nassau County. They’re nearly broke again, twenty years after building themselves back from the brink. Do we ever learn?”

“We may not,” said Stephen, “but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”

After he left, Pamela mulled over the vice president’s final statement. She knew she was making the right decision to leave the
shul
presidency before she even began, and yet this experience would leave a mark on her. Money trumped religion, and cooperation too often seemed an impossibility. Otherwise how could so many die because of one man’s single-minded, if strangely justifiable rage over losing his money?

But then, what of Morris’s brother Stuart? He was in the same position, and he hadn’t acted so rashly, so murderously. Or Stephen, for that matter, who wanted to save the synagogue even though it was a futile exercise.

There were no obvious answers, as Pamela had learned so many times before. But as long as this was a world where dogs could save lives, and love—for a person or for a construct— could rule all, Pamela wasn’t ready to throw in the towel.