The Ritual Bath (7 page)

The grandmother gave him a warm smile.

Decker prodded a sunken chest with his index finger. “Why don’t you beat it?”

“Hey, man, I’m goin’, I’m goin’.”

The detective watched him cross the street. When the boy had disappeared, he returned to the bench.

“Junkie,” he said, sitting down. “They prey on people like the good little Señora: old women with children who can’t give them chase. Sneak up, grab their purses, and they’re a couple bucks richer with very little effort.”

“What a world,” Rina said. “Until now we’d always felt so insulated from all the outside problems.”

“Unfortunately, you’re not.” He turned to face her. “You know what I’d really like?”

“What?”

“I’d really like to see you again.”

Rina didn’t reply.

“If you don’t go out to eat, how about a couple of drinks, dancing?”

She felt sick.

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

Decker’s face was impassive.

“Well, we’d better be getting back,” he said, standing up.

“It’s nothing personal, Peter.”

“Forget it.”

“Honestly, it’s not because I don’t want to.”

“Then why don’t you do it?”

“It’s impossible. You’ve seen the world I live in. You must understand.”

She turned away. Decker stared at her profile and felt the frustration grow.

“What I’d like to understand is why you bothered coming down here in the first place? Feeding me lunch? Dragging me out of the station? Everything you told me could have been easily said over the phone. What the hell was I supposed to think?”

“I’m sorry. I thought you’d like getting out, escaping from all the tension. I was just trying to be nice.”

“Well, you were very nice. Let’s go.”

“I’ve got to say grace after meals first.”

Decker flipped his wrist and checked his watch.

“Go ahead.”

She
bentched
rapidly in silence, but her eyes kept glancing at his face. The more she looked at him, the worse she felt.

“Please don’t be mad,” she said when she had finished her prayers.

“I’m not mad,” he answered coldly. “Just disappointed. But I understand. I’m a goy, you’re a Jew. Let’s go.”

He was driving exceptionally fast and still looked irritated, but she didn’t say anything. He was right. She had given him the wrong impression, and now she felt stupid. It was a mistake for her to come down here. It was a mistake to leave the yeshiva.

He shot through the tail end of an amber light, and a black-and-white caught him.

“Shit,” Decker said as he saw the flashing lights. “Who are those jokers? A couple of morons?” He swung the car over until he was side by side with the police car.

“Sorry, Pete,” the policeman said. “My partner’s a rookie and didn’t recognize the car.”

“Okay,” Decker shouted back. “Hey, Doug, if you want to roust someone, I just saw Ramon Gomez, and he needed a fix badly. He was about to pull a 211 purse snatch on little old lady Sanchez.”

“Where was he?” the officer asked.

“Arleta Park. I kicked him out, but he’s probably hanging around.”

“Will do.”

The patrol car sped off.

Five minutes later they were standing in front of her old Volvo.

“I’m really sorry if I led you on.”

Decker shook his head in self-disgust.

“People hear what they want to hear. I’m no exception. It was inappropriate for me—”

“Oh no, it wasn’t. I mean, I’m not offended by anything you did.”

“I’m glad.” He smiled at her, and she seemed relieved. “Just take care of yourself. You still have my numbers?”

“They’re pinned next to my home phone and the one in the mikvah.”

“You’re welcome to use them whenever you want.”

“Thank you.”

“I hope for your sake you don’t
have
to.”

Back at his
desk, Decker reviewed the notes from his conversation with Rina, made a few corrections and additional comments, and angrily stuffed it all in the Adler Rape file.

He’d made a first-class ass out of himself. Jesus Christ! He was supposed to be investigating a rape case, not putting the make on a religious skirt twelve years his junior.

He picked up a pencil and twirled it absently.

Stop being so goddam hard on yourself, he chastised himself. Lighten up. But the pep talk didn’t work. He felt sleazy and old.

His phone rang. Inhaling deeply, he stared at the blinking light, then picked up the receiver.

“Decker.”

There was a loud whir on the other end.

“Hello?” said Decker.

“Hi,” the voice responded. It was vaguely familiar. Female. Youthful sounding—possibly adolescent. She was shouting over the buzz.

“How can I help you, ma’am?” he asked, tapping the pencil on the desktop.

“Are you the detective on the Foothill rape case?”

Decker sat up in his chair and pulled out a sheet of scrap paper.

“Yes, I am, Ms….?”

“I was wondering about that last girl who was raped…. You know, the librarian?”

“Yes,” Decker said encouragingly. He could barely hear her over the background drone. “Could you speak up, please?”

“What was her name? Ball or Bell…. It was in the papers….”

“What about her?”

“Um, was she by any chance wearing black-and-white dress pumps?”

“Could be,” Decker answered trying to contain his excitement. “That very well could be. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you come down to the station, and the two of us can find out about it together, Ms….?”

The line disconnected.

“Fuck,” he said out loud. “Damn it!” He slammed down the receiver and quickly dialed communications.

“Arnie, it’s Pete Decker.”

“How’s it going Pete?”

“Just fine. Could you get me a location on my last incoming call? She hung up about a second ago.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thanks.”

Decker hung up.

Was she wearing two-tone pumps? You bet your sweet ass she was wearing two-tone pumps, and only the police were supposed to know it. The fact that that perp was a foot fetishist had been held back from the press. The lady knew something, and she’d slipped out of his hands.

Typical!

Fuck!

He knew he’d spoken to her before. She must have been one of the hundreds of anonymous tips that had floated through the station since the rapes began. But her voice stuck in his memory bank. He noted the date, time, and contents of the call, including the background noise, on a tip list and stuck it back in the file. A half-empty aspirin bottle lay on his desk. Opening it up, he popped two tablets in his mouth and washed them down with a cold sip of leftover coffee. He sat thinking. After a few minutes he got up, walked over to the central files and looked up the yeshiva vandalism episodes.

Nothing particularly illuminating. Broken windows, garbage strewn over the grounds, swastikas and obscene messages spray-painted on the walls:
Kikes, Cocksuckers, Baby Killers, Flesh Eaters, Christ Killers
. Maybe it should have bothered him more than it did, but he had passed it off as the same old stuff. Nothing new. Nothing that hadn’t ever been said before. A few of the local punks were questioned, no arrests were made. Case closed. Kaput.

Decker put the file away, closed the drawer, and went back to his desk.

Anti-Semitism was nothing new to him. He’d grown up a good ole boy in Gainesville, where there was little direct contact with Jews but still a lot of prejudice. The locals regarded decadent Miami as a pinko watering hole for kikes, spics, and niggers. His first personal experience with a Jew came when he was fourteen. One of his buddies had been bumped off the first string of the local junior high football team by a Jew—a big strong boy who defied the stereotype. Later on in the day Decker and his friends ran into the Jew off campus. His buddy was pissed and baited the boy into a fight by calling him a Christ Killer. Decker did nothing as the two boys started duking it out, standing on the sidelines even when the rest of the gang jumped into the melee. It wasn’t until he clearly saw that the Jewish boy was hopelessly outmuscled that he’d intervened and stopped the fighting. At fourteen, he was five ten, 170, with a developing pad of musculature that made grown men jealous. The boys listened to him, but weren’t happy about it.

That evening at dinnertime he told his parents about the Jew and what had happened. After an initial silence, his father—a large, taciturn man with broad shoulders—spoke first. Gotta fight, he had said, when you’re threatened. Gotta protect yourself, protect your family and country. But it’s no damn good to fight
someone just because of the way he was born. It’s wrong, and it’s stupid.

His mother’s comment was more theological. The Lord Jesus turned the other cheek. Who are we to judge the infidels? Leave it to the hand of the Lord.

His little brother, Randy, six at the time, smiled and made designs in his mashed potatoes.

The discussion was dropped.

Decker’s friends were cold to him for about a week, clearly angry at his befriending the Hebe. And the Jew wasn’t any friendlier to him either, turning away whenever their paths crossed. Eventually things returned to normal, and the fight was never mentioned by anyone again. But he had learned for a brief period what it was like to be a pariah.

Only his father had seemed to sense his alienation and tried, God bless him, to be more attentive. But Lyle Decker didn’t talk much, and his idea of being therapeutic was having the two of them rebuild the garage together.

Not that Decker had minded the absence of man-to-man discussions. His father was a good person, a hard worker with a gentle soul. His mother had a tougher exterior, but she was also a good, solid person. There was always something sad about her. Decker suspected it had something to do with her not being able to conceive. He’d first learned of his adoption one day after school when he came home and found he had a new baby brother.

Where’d he come from
, he’d asked his mother.
Same place you did
, she’d answered.
God
. Over the years he’d figured out the truth.

So much for sensitivity, he thought, smiling. But it had been traumatic for him. He’d made a special effort to be open and communicative with his own daughter. It had been hard work, but it paid off. They had a warm, close relationship.

The phone rang.

“Decker.”

“It’s Arnie, Pete.”

“Anything?”

“Local call from the Sylmar area.”

“Nothing more specific?”

“Sorry. You want to come down here? Maybe we can work something out with Ma Bell.”

“I probably will. Thanks.”

“You bet.”

Decker hung up.

Sylmar. Where most of the Foothill rapes had been taking place. Far from the mikvah, far from the Jews. There was probably no connection, but he’d read the files again just to be sure. He opened up a drawer and pulled out the Adler Rape folder. The lab reports showed the semen typing from the internal. The mikvah rapist was a secreter. The Foothill rapist had shown up as both a secreter and nonsecreter. But some of the women had had intercourse prior to their rape, confounding the results. Blood was found at the scene of the Adler woman’s rape and on her clothing. All of it identified as hers. Fiber analysis of her
clothes indicated foreign threads of yarn. Rina had told him that the attacker had been wearing a ski mask—probably knitted—and that something fuzzy had been crammed down Mrs. Adler’s throat. The fibers could have come from either or both. Nothing conclusive.

He threw the file back in the drawer and checked his watch. He had a court appearance to catch. An eleven-year-old had snatched the purse of a seventy-year-old grandma as she strolled her six-month-old grandson. The kid had been caught by a good Samaritan. First recorded offense. No major bodily injuries. They’d let him go with a stern lecture.

He got up and put on his jacket. Then he took out his notebook, scribbled “Call Dad” on his message page, and left.

Hawthorne caught Rina just as she was about to enter the classroom.

“What happened at the meeting with the cop?” he asked.

She stared at him in surprise.

“That bad, huh.”

“How did you know?” Rina asked.

“It’s a small place here. Things get around.”

Rina frowned.

“Actually, Sammy told me that you were meeting a policeman. I put two and two together. Find out anything about the rape?”

How in the world did Shmuel know? She’d have to be more careful around her sons in the future.

“Rina, did you hear me?”

“What?”

“The rape…Find out anything new?”

“No,” she said, then turned to leave.

“Come on,” Hawthorne coaxed. “Why else would you bother going down there?”

She hesitated.

“I remembered some more details. Matt, don’t tell anyone about this conversation.”

“My lips are sealed. What details?”

“Just details. They weren’t even important. We’ve both got to go. We’re going to be late.”

“By the way, I picked something up for Sammy.” Hawthorne reached in his pocket and pulled out a baseball card. “Da da! Fernando Valenzuela!”

Rina took the proffered card.

“Thanks Matt. He’ll be thrilled.”

“Tell the little guy I’m still working on the few more that we’ve discussed.”

“I will.”

“You know, I’m free this Thursday night. If you’d like me to take him to a game, I wouldn’t mind. He’s been wanting to go for a long time.”

“He has Computer Club.”

“So let him skip a week. Steve won’t mind. I know Sammy would have a ball.”

“Not this week, Matt. Some other time.”

Baring his teeth and mimicking Dracula, Hawthorne said, “Don’t you trust me?”

Rina gave him a sick smile.

“We’re late, Matt,” she said.

Hawthorne held the door open for her.

“After you.”

His courtliness rubbed her the wrong way. But she lowered her eyes: quietly said, “Thank you.”