by Julia Dahl
“I can do three months,” said Sammy.
“There is something else,” said the lawyer. “I see you were arrested with Ryan Hall. In his apartment. Do you live there?”
“Sort of,” he said. “But I’m not on the lease or anything.”
“Okay, that might help you. I’m guessing the prosecutor hasn’t looked too hard at the file yet, but I think I’m likely to hear from him about this. Here’s the thing: If the drugs and the gun you had on you weren’t yours. If they belonged to the Halls, say…”
“You want me to snitch on the Halls?”
“I’m not saying one way or the other,” said the lawyer. “I’m saying it may be an option.”
“You’re the lawyer,” I said. “What do you think he should do?”
“It’s up to you.”
“I’m not going to get Ryan in more trouble,” said Sammy. “I can do three months.”
And that was that. Sammy stayed by us in New Paltz until his court date. He rarely left the house, and spent most of his time asleep or on the phone with Ryan. God knows what they were talking about.
Pessie came to visit several times, but Sammy did not want to spend much time with her. Like me, Pessie had been worried about Sammy’s new life, but unlike me she seemed confident he would come to his senses. I had always liked Pessie, and as she got older, I liked her even more. I had never met anyone like her. She loved Sammy no matter what he did. She even liked me, despite the fact that I represented everything she was supposed to be afraid of: alone, unpious. Sammy was always trying to get her to leave the community, but she did not want to. She said she loved Hashem. She said that Jews needed to be strong to survive and that our strength came from unity. She said she was doing her part. But I do not think it was easy. She defended the community when Sammy made blanket statements about how evil and corrupt everyone was, and I imagine that, occasionally, she defended those of us gone off the derech when her friends in Roseville called us crazy. She told me that as more people went OTD there was opportunity to merge the interests of the two communities. She said one of her friends started a group for people whose family members had left and she hoped she could help with that.
But once we learned Sammy was going to jail, I began to see that she wasn’t as certain about her future as she pretended. One afternoon, she came over with a chulent and Sammy wouldn’t come out of his room to see her, so she and I ate together in the kitchen. She told me that there was a man from Israel who wished to marry her.
“Do you like him?” I asked.
“He is very nice. Not too old.” Pessie paused. “Did you know your husband in Israel for long before you married?”
I shook my head and told her the story about Etan: that he was related to the man and woman that lived down the hall from my aunt and uncle in Jerusalem. He came to Shabbos dinner at their apartment one Friday and I happened to be there. He asked after me and we met again, more formally. My aunt and uncle did not mention that I had been off the derech for more than a year as a teenager, and his family did not ask.
“Did you tell him later?” asked Pessie.
I shook my head. “Why should I?”
“So he would know you?”
I remember being puzzled by what she said. It had not ever really seemed possible that Etan would know me.
“Do you think that if you had told him about Florida and Rebekah that things might have been different?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and I didn’t. “I think the way things turned out was probably for the best.”
“Did you love him?”
I almost lied, but Pessie deserved the truth. “No,” I said. “But I liked him. Most of the time. I think maybe love is…” Love is, what? I never saw anything that looked like love between my parents. They did not kiss or hug or hold hands. They did not say, “I love you.” But I think they had a good marriage. As good as any I’ve seen.
“I always thought I would be Sammy’s wife,” she said. “I know I am not supposed to want so much. But when I imagined being married, and having children, I imagined being with Sammy. And it seemed like fun.” She shook her head and bent forward to sip her tea. “It feels very different now.”
Isaac and I both went to the courthouse in Catskill for Sammy’s sentencing. For some reason, I kept thinking my father might appear. Part of me wished that he knew what was happening with Sammy, although I know Sammy would not have wanted him to. He hates my father—who was more like a distant uncle to him than a real father—and I could tell, as he stood there in Isaac’s too-big suit coat, shoulders bent before the judge, that Sammy was scared. He, too, had failed at life outside the shtetl and he would never want my father to see him fallen this low. I knew the feeling and it broke my heart.
I wrote him a letter every few days. He wrote me back only once. Nobody called me when he was in the infirmary. And nobody called when he stabbed the black man.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
REBEKAH
I leave Kaitlyn around 5:00 P.M. and drive south toward the New Paltz address from the library, my heart beating in my teeth. A sister in New Paltz. It has to be Aviva, right?
Saul doesn’t answer his phone when I call, so I leave a message: “I think I might have found her! I talked to somebody who said Sam had a sister in New Paltz. And there was a New Paltz address on the backgrounder the library gave me. I’m going there now! Call me!”
The evening sky is the color of Orange Crush as I turn onto West Pine Street. Number 781 is a two-story yellow house with a driveway leading to a small shed in the back. I pull in and turn off the engine. Breathe in. Breathe out. The house is dark. A wind chime trills in one of the trees in the yard. Someone has draped a kind of black netting over bushes along the front of the house, protecting them from winter, I assume. It does not appear that anyone is home, but I knock anyway. I knock again. The curtains are drawn in the two first-floor windows. The street is quiet, a few lights on in the nearby houses, but almost no one out walking, which means no one to get suspicious if I sneak around the side yard. Which I do. There are still patches of snow on the lawn and ice in the corners of the small deck attached to the back of the house. I climb up three steps to a door with a window, cup my hands around my face, and look into the kitchen. I can’t make out much beyond the lines of the counters and a glowing clock on the microwave. There are papers and magnets on the refrigerator but I can’t tell what they say. Does she live here? I try the door, but it’s locked. What would I have done if it wasn’t? Walk in and crawl in her bed? Wait for Mommy to come home?
I go back to Saul’s car and turn on the engine. She is bound to be home soon. After about ten minutes, Nechemaya calls.
“Pessie’s neighbors do not wish to be in the newspaper. They are concerned that whoever did this might target them.”
“Okay,” I say. “But I don’t know if my editor is going to let me stay on the story if no one from the community is willing to go on the record.”
“I understand,” he says. “I am doing what I can.”
I pull out my notebook and open my laptop to transcribe what Kaitlyn told me. I’ve already missed the deadline for tomorrow’s paper, so I decide not to e-mail Larry with my new information about Pessie coming to Sam’s welcome home party. Instead, I click into an open Wi-Fi network (gotta love a college town) and Google “Conrad Hall.” The first few results are contact listings that refer me to the property in Greenville, but at the bottom of the page a 2011 article from the Albany Times-Union pops up.
MAN WITH TIES TO HATE GROUP QUESTIONED IN TROY DOUBLE HOMICIDE
By Marisol Lopez
An ex-con with ties to a right-wing hate group was questioned in relation to the murders of Quantrell Hamilton and Michael Wilkins, police sources say.
Conrad “Connie” Hall, 56, was questioned and released Thursday.
Hamilton and Wilkins were shot execution-style in their Troy apartment on February 19. Police suspect that the murders were drug-related.
Hall has a long criminal history, including a nine-year prison term for manslaughter. He was arrested in January 2009 with members of the so-called Greene Freemen at a demonstration on the day of President Obama’s inauguration. Hall and about 20 protesters, some carrying firearms, attempted to enter the Capitol building. Charges against him were later dropped.
The Greene Freemen are listed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch as a white nationalist group.
Neighbors told the Times-Union that Hamilton and Wilkins had recently moved into the Troy apartment and were believed to be using it as a holding place for guns and drugs.
A woman who answered the phone at Hall’s residence refused to comment on the case.
I copy and paste the article’s URL into an e-mail and send it to Larry, along with a note:
The guy Pessie used to be engaged to is/was in a relationship with Conrad Hall’s son Ryan. Do you know what happened with this homicide? Anyone ever caught? Thoughts?
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Web site lists more than forty New York-based organizations that they consider to be “hate groups,” including the Radical White Persons Party and the Suffolk County Aryans. The Nation of Islam makes the list, too. The Greene Freemen—who the SPLC identify as both white nationalist and Aryan Nations—don’t appear to have their own Web site, so I click on a link for the Rochester-based Caucasian Caucus and am redirected to a no-frills Web site called The Protected. The banner at the top of the site reads, in flashing red letters: WE ARE THE WHITE MINORITY! PROTECTED BY GOD! SWORN TO FIGHT FOR OUR RACE! Below the banner are dozens of discussion threads, beginning with “Introduction to the Protected,” then “Rules of the Board,” then “News Links,” “International,” “Money,” “Self-Defense,” “Strategy,” “Events”; there are even threads for “Poetry,” “White Singles,” and “Ladies.” I click into “Strategy” and see that there are more than two hundred pages of discussions with thousands of views. I scroll down and click on a thread called “The Problem with Jews.” The post is written by a user named John March. He starts by telling readers that although they might think Jews are just harmless white people in funny hats, they are actually responsible for the destruction of the white race and “civilized” society more than any other group—“even niggers.” He goes on. Jews are parasites who suck the life out of whatever country they are in, and then move on when there is nothing left. They are also sexual perverts who encourage pornography, masturbation, bestiality, and all manner of ugly stuff to keep the white race weak and distracted from their evil ways. He goes on and on, linking to various speeches and videos, several by David Duke, and then turns to “History,” tracing the origins of modern Jews’ use of sexual perversion as a weapon to Freud. Finally, he takes on “The Holocaust Myth.” I click out, disgusted. Obviously, it’s not a surprise to me that neo-Nazis and white supremacists exist; I mean, I’m from Florida. I’ve seen plenty of trucks flying Confederate flags, and I’ve spent at least a couple weekend afternoons half-watching cable news documentaries about Aryan prison gangs. I saw American History X like everybody else. What I didn’t understand, though, and what this Web site proves, is how much thought, how much imagination, these people put into building their ugly theories and alternative histories. It’s not posturing. It’s not just provocation. It’s fucking serious. John March is an articulate writer. He doesn’t sound unhinged or particularly angry. In fact, the post reads like an above-average academic paper—he even embedded images of newspaper articles from during World War II. Someone predisposed to hating Jews would find much to bolster their beliefs in this post. And someone who had been the victim of sexual abuse by a Jew—someone like Sam—might find an easy excuse to think that what happened to him was part of some larger, ongoing conspiracy. As if the poor kid’s mind hadn’t been fucked with enough.
I’ve been sitting in Saul’s car for almost two hours when my phone rings. It’s a number I don’t recognize.
“This is Rebekah,” I say.
“Rebekah? This is Officer Van Keller.”
“Hi,” I say. “How are you?”
“I’m calling you from my cell. Are you still in town?”
“I’m in New Paltz,” I say.
“Can we meet?”
“Now?”
“If possible. I’ll come to you.”
We agree to meet at a diner just off the New Paltz exit from the Thruway. I order a bowl of potato soup and send Levi a text asking him to call me. If I can get him to comment on Pessie’s apparently secret friendship with her ex, that might be enough for a story. After about an hour, Van Keller appears in the doorway dressed in jeans and a Carhartt jacket. I wave to catch his attention and he slides into my booth.
“Must be important,” I say, trying to keep my smile salutary, not flirtatious. It’s difficult. Poor guy; must be annoying to have every woman he meets turn into a giggling, stuttering teenager in his presence.
“Yeah,” he says, taking off his coat. “We’re off the record, okay?”
“Okay.”
He nods. The waitress appears and he orders a Diet Coke.
“I’m probably going to lose my job for talking to you,” he says. “But I’m not sure what else to do. You’ve already written about the case, so it makes sense that you’d keep digging. I read your other stuff. About that murder in Brooklyn? I guess this is your beat. So. And you have that plate number. I’m sure somebody at the Trib can figure out who it belongs to. Maybe you already have. Have you?”
I don’t answer immediately, which he takes to mean yes. He’s nervous, talking fast, tearing at the paper napkin in front of him.
“Right, yeah. So the truck Pessie’s neighbors saw is registered to a man named Conrad Hall. You’re not from around here so you probably haven’t heard of him, but Connie Hall is a bad dude. He’s Aryan Brotherhood. You know them?”
I nod.
“I don’t think he advertises it, but that’s blood in blood out. The Brotherhood controls most of the drugs and the guns coming into the state—outside of New York City. Heroin has become a big problem here in the past couple years. Everybody hooked on prescription pills is losing their prescription since they started cracking down on doctors, and heroin is almost as good, and cheaper. Most of the robberies we see are heroin-related. Junkies stealing just enough to get a fix. Breaking into cars and houses. It’s not as bad in Roseville, partly because the Jews aren’t into that shit and they’re more and more of the population. But the rest of Rockland and Orange County. Plus Dutchess and Greene and Ulster and up in Albany. And if they’re not robbing—and they’re white—they can sometimes make a little cash moving product for people like Connie. Which means they want to carry a gun. And if you’ve got a record, you can’t get a gun in New York State. Well, you can’t get it legally. But the Brotherhood has people all over, so they bring guns up from the Carolinas, Virginia, even Pennsylvania. And guns just up the ante for everybody. Now we gotta think about getting shot every time we pull over some stoned asshole, you know? I mean, it happens. Last year a probation officer got killed checking on a meth head in Woodbury. He knocks, and the guy’s out of his mind, and armed. Shoots the officer through the door. Cop’s wife had just had a baby. And, like, even the tweaker, he didn’t know what he was doing. Without that gun he’d have gotten violated, sure, but now he’s life without parole for capital murder.”
Van Keller is talking alternately to me and to the napkin he has now torn to confetti. He pauses, looks at the shredded paper, then makes a kind of disgusted exhale out of his nose, and pushes the pile aside.
“I don’t know if you know this already,” I say, “but I’ve talked to two people who told me that Connie Hall’s son, Ryan, is gay, and that he’s in a relationship with a Jew from Roseville named Sam Kagan. Sam Kagan used to be engaged to Pessie.”
Van Keller blinks. “Are you kidding me?”
“No,” I say, and tell him about my visits with Mellie and Kaitlyn. He takes in what I am saying w
ith eyes wide, mouth agape.
“So,” he says, after I finish, “Connie could have gone to Roseville looking for Sam.”
“Right,” I say. “Except Sam hasn’t lived there in years.”
Van falls silent. He wipes his hand across his face, thinking.
“I read an article about Connie Hall being questioned in a double homicide in Troy,” I say. “Did they ever get anybody for that?”
Van smirks and shakes his head. The waitress sets down a glass of Diet Coke and a paper-wrapped straw. “They indicted a kid connected to Connie.”
“Connected?”
“Friend of one of his sons, I think. I’m not sure which one. A small-time dealer, full-time dirtbag named Tim Doyle. But he didn’t make it to trial.”
“Didn’t make it?”
“He died in jail a couple days after they booked him.”
“How?”
“Hung himself was the official word,” says Keller. “But the Brotherhood has a lot of people. And it’s not like they did an autopsy.”
“You think Connie Hall had him killed?”
“I think that being close to Connie Hall can be deadly. And I know that I do not want him and his racist friends in my town. I know the Jews are weird, I get why some people think they aren’t good neighbors. But they deserve to live in peace. That’s my job. That’s my chief’s job.”
“Does he see it that way?”
Van almost smiles. “Good question, Rebekah. Good fucking question. You didn’t hear this from me, but you can look it up easy enough: Connie Hall is Chief Gregory’s stepbrother.”
“How is that possible?”
“What do you mean?”
“How’d he get to be chief if he’s related to a … criminal?”
“Being related to a criminal’s not a crime,” he says. “Ever hear of Whitey Bulger?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Big-time mobster from Boston. They say he killed, like, thirty people over the years. His brother was a state politician. Got reelected I don’t know how many times. People believed he was on the right side of the law.”