Yom Kippur Murder (25 page)

“Sounds like it. And they didn’t have much to do with each other.”

“But in a way, they did. Bert Finch wanted to scare me to death so that I’d get Paterno and Gallagher to leave 603. In a way, he succeeded. I put pressure on them and they agreed.”

“But it cost him.”

“Oh yes, it cost him. Arnold thought I hammered out a pretty tough deal.”

“And when Herskovitz was murdered, it gave the other Finch the idea of moving in on the book.”

“He’d been calling Nathan, trying to get him to make a deal, without even knowing for sure that he had the book. Did you see that book, Jack?”

“I was afraid to breathe near it.”

We had all agreed that the book belonged to Mrs. Paterno, who seemed nonplussed at the idea. When we were leaving, she said something about donating it to a museum in Nathan’s memory. I liked that. It made me like her, too.

“Warren Finch knew Nathan didn’t have it, or wouldn’t keep it where it could be found. He’d staged a break-in fifteen years ago; at least I think he’s the one that did it. That was before Metropolitan owned the building. I bet he got his brothers to buy the building so he could have access to Nathan.”

“Good thought,” Jack said.

“And he probably got it in his head that Nathan kept up with all the people he’d given books to before the war. If he couldn’t have ‘the big one,’ at least he could try for some of the others. That’s why he stole the address book.”

“And started calling everyone in it.”

“Of course, Mrs. Paterno’s name wouldn’t be there. Nathan was too careful for that. I almost wish Warren Finch had called her. She could really have put him in his place.”

“Your friend, the dragon lady.”

I laughed. “That’s just what Gallagher called her.”

“Tell me, how many Ramirezes were there?”

“Two brothers, Angel and Jesus, if you can believe that,” I said, pronouncing the names in English.

“Well, they were good boys. You said they went to Puerto Rico to see their sick mother.”

“I guess that’s one way of looking at it.” I kind of sighed. “They were both in Puerto Rico. Jesus came back first and got arrested for the murder. Angel came back a couple of days later and started following me. Then Warren Finch bailed Jesus out of jail last Monday morning, and they both ended up at Bettina Strauss’s apartment.”

“You’re lucky to be alive.”

“I know. Maybe you can give me some lessons in hand-to-hand combat.”

“You inviting me?”

“Asking you.”

He grinned. “Fine. We’ll set up a date.”

He had worked his way south and east, and we were approaching the Brooklyn Bridge. I had never crossed it before, but there’s no mistaking it. It’s big and powerful, and you just know it’s going to last forever.

“Some view,” I said.

Jack reached over and squeezed my hand. “That leaves us with the homicide. I figure Arnold’ll get the charge reduced if the DA goes for murder.” It was the first time he had called Arnold by his first name.

“It wasn’t murder.” I could see that living room as we had found it on Yom Kippur morning, two weeks ago, the body of Nathan in his overcoat, his hat a few feet away, blood everywhere. A chill passed through me. “Nathan was a strange, wonderful man,” I said. “As his son told me, he had his dark side. From everything I’ve heard, he hounded a man to death.”

“That professor? Sounded like the guy deserved what he got.”

“Even so, think of the kind of man that dedicates almost twenty years of his life to something like that.”

“He had good reasons.”

“He also thought he had good reasons to keep his first family a secret from the children of his second wife.”

“I don’t think it went that way,” Jack said. “You don’t tell a three-year-old or a six-year-old that Daddy had a wife before your Mommy. You wait until the kid is older, when he can understand.”

“And by the time they could understand, he had alienated them because he was protecting Hannah.”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

It did. I thought about it as he drove through the narrow streets of Brooklyn Heights with its restored brownstones and pretty trees. “And later, when Hannah was gone and the children were all but gone, he took out the pictures of the people who had never disappointed him. That’s what Nina said, the children who would have been stars.” I shook my head. “If he had told his children about Renata, he’d be alive today.”

“Think so?”

“I’m sure of it. I think what happened is that Mitchell got word from the bank that Nathan had changed the ownership of the certificate, and he came up to see what was going on. His father was old, maybe he was getting forgetful. Mitchell didn’t necessarily have any evil intent. He probably met Nathan coming home from his afternoon in the sun and went upstairs with him. He said when I met him that he hadn’t been in that apartment for ten years. The day before Yom Kippur was probably that first time. He walked into the living room with his father and saw those pictures. I saw what happened to him when he saw them the Monday after the murder. He put on a good show for me.”

“You think he became enraged,” Jack said as he slipped into a parking space about six inches longer than my car.

“He realized this had been another family of Nathan’s, and he imagined, the way Nina did, that they were the cause of Nathan’s ‘neglect’ of their mother. Of course, he wasn’t neglecting her. She was neglecting him. And he protected her honor till he died.”

“You going to tell Nina and Mitchell?”

I had worried about that for several days. If I told, Nina might feel more kindly toward her father. But was it my place to overrule him? “I don’t think so,” I said. “Maybe they’ll get some comfort out of the fact that he left everything he owned to them.”

“Except the book.”

“Yes, except the book.”

“I think he’d be proud of you, kid.”

I swallowed hard but didn’t say anything.

His apartment was on the top floor of a brownstone. It was tiny, compact, and so neat, it made me a little ashamed of the loose way I kept my house. I wondered whether he always kept it this way or if it was because he was showing it off to me.

“I love it,” I said. “Look at that marvelous kitchen.” It was minuscule but very up-to-date.

“Small but serviceable.” He took his gun out of the ankle holster he carried it in and put it on a shelf in the coat closet. Then he lifted a strip of Velcro and slipped off the leather holster.

“A self-cleaning oven. I really envy you.”

“Say a couple of rosaries for that.”

I put my bag down on a chair, and he took me in his arms. It all dissolved, Mitchell, the afternoon, the apartment at 603.

“Call Sister What’s-her-name and tell her you’re not staying over.”

Funny things fluttered inside me.

“Come on,” he said in a low voice. “It’s time.”

As he said it, I knew he was right. It was time. I went to the phone in the kitchen and dialed Celia. I told her I had decided to go home after all, and thanks anyway. She said she would miss my visit. I hung up and stood looking at the phone.

“You don’t like to lie, do you?”

I shook my head.

“Look at it this way. If we’re both here, it’s home.”

I liked that. “OK.”

Then he kissed me as if he really meant it and started unbuttoning my jacket.

For fifteen years, nearly half my life, I had lived a very structured life. Rise at five for chapel at five-thirty. Breakfast. Morning activities. Lunch. And on through the day. Few idle moments. Fatigue by early evening, bed generally by nine. Even having a special close friend among the nuns was discouraged for fairly obvious reasons.

Some of that stays with you after you leave. You find yourself planning when this will happen and when that should be done. Since I had left St. Stephen’s, nothing had happened the way I had thought it would, and standing on the threshold of Jack’s bedroom, I knew it was better this way, better to do something when the time was right than when you had thought the time might be right.

Until last summer, I had not looked at myself in a mirror for fifteen years. Now Jack was about to see the body I had only recently seen myself. But if I had any sense of hesitancy, it evaporated quickly in the heat of a newly overpowering feeling.

His bedroom was very small, with a double bed made up without a spread. The blanket was a bright, deep blue, and the sheets pure white. There were two pillows side by side, and the linen looked freshly ironed. After a first glance, I didn’t see very much or care very much what the room looked like or what a structured life offered or what good planning could do for you. I let the rest of me take over.

It was quite lovely.

It was dark, and I think Jack had fallen asleep briefly. He stirred and said, “Hungry?”

I said, “Not anymore,” and he said, “I didn’t mean that,” and I said, “I didn’t mean that either.”

We got up and dressed, sort of, and he took two steaks out of the refrigerator that looked as though they could have fed the whole house. When I objected to the size, he cut one in half and said I should take it home with me tomorrow.

He was a lot better than I at cooking. He microwaved a mixture of fresh vegetables and made a salad. With balsamic vinegar.

“What is a cop doing with balsamic vinegar?” I asked.

“My sister the caterer gave it to me for my birthday,” he said. “Tastes just like ordinary.”

I laughed. I just liked the idea of having a sister. I was an only child who lost her father very young and her mother at fourteen. It’s a loss I never completely got over.

It was a great meal, a time to set aside the murder and the loss, my anguish at Mitchell’s role. There was something different about us as we sat at adjoining sides of his small table, eating his great dinner. For the first time since I met him, I felt completely comfortable with him.

I was, needless to say, awake early. When it got light, Jack woke up.

“You like to walk in the morning?” he asked.

“I do almost every day.”

“Let’s do it.”

He gave me a sweatshirt to put on over my plaid flannel shirt so I could go without a coat on, since my jacket was home in Oakwood. We walked over to the river and then alongside it toward the Statue of Liberty. There were walkers and runners everywhere, singles, couples of all kinds, fathers and children. It was a glorious day. Wherever you looked, it was beautiful. Just across the river was the southern end of Manhattan with all the buildings that make up the skyline. After a while we stopped and looked out over the water, feeling the wind.

That’s when I remembered. “I have to do something,” I said. “For Nathan. In Manhattan.”

“Can it wait till after breakfast?”

“Yes.” I walked over to the grassy area on the other side of the walkway. “I need some stones.”

“Rocks?”

“Yes.”

“How big?”

“A couple of big ones. The rest, it doesn’t matter.”

We went looking for them, going back toward our starting point. The little ones were easy; they were everywhere. It took some doing to find the big ones. We got back to Jack’s place laden.

“You gonna tell me about it?”

“After breakfast.”

It was near noon when we got to West Seventy-ninth Street. From Riverside Drive we walked down to the boat basin at the western end of Seventy-ninth. Some people actually live on boats that are docked there. Others keep their boats for weekend use. It’s a pretty place, and from that point you can walk either north or south right along the Hudson River. I hadn’t known that, but policemen seem to be very knowledgeable about their city.

We went down below the basin. Jack was carrying a small burlap bag he’d found in a kitchen cabinet and filled with our rock collection.

“Wait here,” I said. “I have to do this alone.”

I took the bag of rocks and carried it in my arms.
Every man’s death diminishes me
, I thought as I walked, but especially this one. About fifty feet from where I’d left Jack, I stopped, put the bag down, and opened my handbag. Inside, along with the flashlight, which I wouldn’t have to carry much longer, and the roll of quarters, which I might be able to dispense with, too, I found Mark Brownstein’s prayer book. I turned the pages until I came to the one with his favorite writing: “Inscribe me for blessing in the Book of Life.” Sadly, it was too late for that. I turned a few more pages until I found what I wanted.

I leaned against the railing with my right side and faced south. I didn’t know how the Jews did it or how Nathan had planned to do it, so I did it the way it seemed right to me.

“This is for Nathan,” I said. I believe in saying things aloud. Then there’s no question about whether you thought it or thought you thought it. It was spoken.

“For the sin which we have sinned against Thee under stress or through choice,” I read, and I reached into the bag
and threw one small stone into the river. “For the sin which we have sinned against Thee openly or in secret.” I threw another stone into the river. “For the sin which we have sinned against Thee in stubbornness or in error.” And I threw a third rock, a slightly bigger one, into the Hudson.

I went down through the whole list—evil meditations, word of mouth, abuse of power, profanation, a few others—and threw a stone into the river for each one. They were the kinds of sins I had once taken very seriously. Today they didn’t seem very important at all.

“And for all the others,” I said, thinking of sins that Nathan alone could enumerate, “please forgive him.” I picked up the burlap bag and dropped it in the river. It sank quickly.

The day was still beautiful. I could go home now if I chose to and read some poetry, prepare for my Tuesday class, call Joseph and tell her how it had all turned out. There were just so many hours left in the day, and I could fill them all with worthwhile activities.

Or I could go back to Brooklyn with Jack, read the Sunday paper with him, cook dinner while he worked on his law assignments. I could even stay overnight and go home tomorrow. I wasn’t needed anywhere. I had a whole, wonderful day of unscheduled hours ahead of me.

“Good-bye, Nathan,” I said to the shimmering river. I put the prayer book in my bag and walked back to where my lover waited for me.