A Kiss for Rabbi Gabrielle

by Roger Herst

  “Maybe I can show you a part of Southern California that won’t curdle your blood. It’s not as bad as you make it out to be.”

  “I’d like that a lot. Let’s see if we can arrange trips there at the same time.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Gabby replied. She decided to change the subject before they moved from suggestion to a commitment she wasn’t sure she was entirely ready to make. “Say, I’ve got a question for you. What’s a Saturday night special?”

  “Want the popular or esoteric definition?”

  “Start with the popular.”

  “A cheap handgun that barely functions but is nevertheless lethal. Usually made from scrap steel and costing under a hundred dollars. But the real definition is a handgun rented before the weekend, a special deal for criminal use on Saturday night. The buyer is required to pay in full on Monday with the proceeds from robberies. It's sort of a leveraged buyout where the seller provides the buyer with an asset to raise money for the sale.”

  “Is that common practice in the District?”

  “You bet. Why do you ask?” “I can’t stop thinking that Bart Skulkin was shot because he was trying to stop the flow of guns into his school.”

  “Do the police think that?” “They will only say that the investigation is continuing. Is there any way I can learn how guns are introduced into Bart's school?”

  “I’ll give it some thought. See you in shul Friday evening.”

  “No gun talk at Ohav Shalom, please. And just for your information, they now refer to me there as their gun-slinging rabbi.”

  “Not a word. Promise you.”

  ***

  On Tuesday afternoon, Gabby arrived at Georgetown Hospital dressed in a white sweats and ready for tennis. She found Chuck dozing in a chair in Thomas Belmont’s private room, near a window that overlooked an unsightly rooftop jungle. A magazine had slipped from his lap and his hand had followed; his arm dangled limply. Thomas, an oxygen tube in his nose, lay under sheets that to Gabby looked like a shroud. Medical paraphernalia hissed and occasionally beeped. On the wall-mounted TV screen, its sound muted, a handsome soap opera couple was engaged in an animated argument.

  There was no extra chair, so Gabby knelt beside Chuck. Very softly, so that Thomas could not hear, she whispered, “You’re too young for this. God usually reserves such duty for older people.”

  Chuck sighed softly. His eyes opened lethargically, closed briefly, and then opened wide, recognition and animation replacing dreary exhaustion. “It’s the shits,” he responded. “There must be an easier way than this. Thomas hasn’t got a disease, but a bloody consortium of diseases. When he gets control over one, he has to buck another. His dike has so many holes that he hasn’t got enough fingers to plug them.”

  She nodded with understanding. Since Thomas had begun his inexorable descent, Chuck’s jovial banter had all but ceased. Their eyes did most of the talking now. She reached out to clasp his shoulder.

  “Waiting is a drag,” Chuck finally muttered. “Just sitting here waiting for something to happen is driving me nuts. There’s nothing I can do, except remain close by. I think he appreciates that. It’s little enough compared to what he’s given me. You know what I mean, Rabbi Gabby?”

  “Of course. Thomas is fortunate to have you.”

  She wasn’t surprised when he deflected the conversation away from himself and said, “To keep my mind from atrophying, I’ve been going over the details of Bart’s murder. Made maps of the scene. I confess to illusions about solving the crime, then going to the police with a masterful solution. The homicide inspector will say to me, “My God, Monsieur Browner, why didn’t we think of this before?” Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten that far. Interested to see what I’ve come up with?

  “Yes. I’ve been so busy fighting brushfires with Dov that I haven’t even had time to read what you left me at the office.”

  A male nurse, in white uniform, breezed into the room, astonished to find a second visitor with Thomas. After a brief acknowledgment, he inspected an instrument panel above his patient, adjusted an intravenous drip, and swept around the bed to monitor the urine bag. “Sorry for the intrusion,” he said, without looking back, as he left the room. The door snapped shut, drowning out most of the ambient noise.

  Like an old man with lower back pain, Chuck hauled himself from the chair, whispering, “Let’s go to the cafeteria for some coffee. Thomas can do without me for fifteen minutes. I’ll show you what I’ve found.”

  She studied Thomas’ emaciated face, pale against the hospital pillows, and quickly concurred.

  A few minutes later, coffee in hand, Chuck led Gabby through the nearly vacant hospital cafeteria to a table out of earshot of the other patrons. He opened a thick manila envelope and extracted the two files inside.

  The first file included a map of Fort Dupont Park and Gabby studied it for a moment, noting the two parallel roads that separated the playing fields and what appeared to be open meadow. Chuck had also included a smaller map that he’d clipped from The Washington Times. He’d marked the murder site – between a parking area for about twenty cars and the field house.

  “I remember a police spokeswoman saying that Bart’s Camry was parked just about here,” Chuck said, pointed to the parking area. “There were no signs of a struggle in the car, which precludes the possibility of a carjacking. It occurred to me that he might have been shot someplace else, but it would have been difficult to move the body. Bart was a large man and would have been, literally, dead weight.”

  With her finger, Gabby traced a line between the parking lot and the field house. “The key is still why he was there in the first place. If we can learn that, everything else will flow.”

  “And why after dusk?” Chuck added.

  She noticed he was far more animated when out of Thomas’ company. “What’s in this field house?”

  “No idea. Never been there. And I don’t think any of my friends have either.”

  “I can check it out this afternoon. Anacostia Park is close Fort Dupont. What about the murder weapon?”

  He sorted through a stack of clippings, many highlighted in yellow, and leafed through a legal pad that held the notes he’d made. “Bart was struck by two bullets from a .9 millimeter semi-automatic. The first entered his back and, according to the lab report the Southeast Bulletin printed, sliced through his right lung. The second ruptured the carotid artery in his neck and caused him to bleed to death in minutes.”

  Gabby tested her coffee and found it still too hot to swallow. The thought of Bart, helpless and bleeding to death, grieved her. “What kind of a weapon is a .9 millimeter semi-automatic?” she asked.

  “You’re asking me? I’ve never shot anything but a BB gun and that was when I was twelve.”

  “A handgun, right? They’re not easy to shoot, are they?”

  “Ask your friend, Joel Fox. You said he told his kids at the shooting club not to believe anything they saw about guns on TV. That shattered my childhood image of the movie cowboy, on a galloping horse, who could shoot Indians with a six-shooter held behind his back. And what about Burt Lancaster shooting gold coins out of the air with his Winchester in Showdown on the Rio Grande?”

  Gabby was now sorting clippings for herself and, from time to time, stopping to read. “Looks like the killer wasn’t far from Bart,” she said.

  “Do you think he suspected what was coming?”

  “No idea until I see the site myself. There must have been some light in the parking lot and additional lights at the entrance to the field house. What do you think, Chuck? You usually have good instincts.”

  His glanced at his watch; it was clear to Gabby that he was already getting nervous about being away from Thomas. She smiled reassurance and he stood to collect his papers. “Bart didn’t go there to smell the roses,” he said. “It must have been something to do with his students. He parked his car and went to meet someone at the field house. Beyond that, it’s all guesses.”

 
Gabby had to race to keep up with him as he headed off to the elevators. While they waited for one to arrive, she said, “There were two bullets, each entering from a different direction. Do you think there might have been two killers?”

  “Ballistics confirmed that both bullets were shot from the same weapon.”

  “Then how about this scenario? Bart was walking or running away from the field house so the killer fired into his back. Now wounded and no longer moving, he turned to face his assassin who aimed at his head, hitting him in the neck.”

  Chuck punched the well-worn elevator button again. “We don’t know if more than two bullets were fired. In open terrain, additional shots could have missed him altogether. I think the first one took him by surprise.”

  “You missed your calling, friend. When you’ve worked off your sentence with me at Ohav, I’ll recommend you for the Homicide Squad.”

  The elevator ascended from the basement cafeteria to the lobby, where they would have to transfer to another to reach the patients’ floors. Gabby hugged Chuck close and held on. “Losing a loved one is hell, isn’t it?”

  “A nightmare that doesn’t end,” he said, pulling away from her embrace as his elevator arrived.

  She pulled him back for a instant, saying, “It will, Chuck. That’s from your old friend, Gabby. It will. But only in God’s time.”

  ***

  Wind and rain make tennis in March an iffy proposition for Washington players. As Gabby drove to her appointment with Marcel, a brisk wind drove clouds from the northwest. But no rain had fallen, so tennis was still a possibility. She crossed the Anacostia River on the 11th Street Bridge, hoping for an exit ramp that would deposit her near the park entrance. But road repairs and a wall of concrete Jersey bunkers frustrated this hope, and she was forced to descend into a deteriorating neighborhood where streets were strewn with wrecked vehicles and uncollected garbage. Loitering men stared at her Jeep Cherokee as she passed them. Though her doors were already locked, she reset the locking mechanism and concentrated on navigating the unfamiliar streets. The detour had cost her some time and, by the time she weaved back toward the riverside park and located the public tennis courts, it was past 3:30 p.m.

  Marcel Clipper, clad in an orange school jacket and white tennis shorts, greeted her beside the gate to Court Two. He apologized that some of his players, probably guessing that rain would prevent practice, hadn’t shown up. His third and fourth seeded players, Horace Sklar and Diamond Moore, both clad in sweat pants and orange jackets, were drilling on Court One. She admired the exaggerated topspin of their forehands – not the flat stroke she had learned as a child, but the stroke young players used to win tournaments. They punched the ball with youthful abandon; a trait she knew from experience would lead to defeat, unless it was properly disciplined.

  Once Gabby and Marcel faced each other, Horace and Diamond stopped to watch. In sweat clothes she looked younger and more athletic than she had in the school auditorium. Marcel had privately pledged to whip her, simply to uphold the honor of the Anacostia team; until she returned his first ball, he’d had every reason for confidence.

  As she began to feel comfortable with the court surface, Gabby’s good footwork enabled her to return everything Marcel fired at her. Soon she was matching him stroke for stroke. He tested her by forcing her to switch from forehand to backhand, where he believed most women failed. But Gabby’s backhand was her strongest asset.

  As play progressed, Marcel over-hit his balls and made too many errors. At two games to two in the first set, his bravado was gone. By now, the quality of the match had attracted other players and additional spectators from the parking lot. Out of the corner of her eye, Gabby noticed a Rastafarian in a multi-colored beret and a group of black men, in dark, double-breasted suits, who seemed curiously out of place. They were joined by the equally well-dressed occupants of a maroon Mercedes. The intensity of the game temporarily distracted everyone from the heavy clouds sweeping overhead.

  Marcel’s serve, matching Lydia’s for speed, gave Gabby some trouble. During the first four games, he easily won his service game while she had to scrap to defend her own. To compensate, she began to hop in place as she prepared to return, a technique she’d learned from Titus Cecera, and the strategy paid off. Returns that, in the early games, she’d driven into the net now passed over it, and remained low enough to prevent Marcel from cutting them off with forcing volleys. Age and stamina favored him; experience favored her. She hoped to keep him off balance, so that he would continue to make mistakes and become frustrated, but he held on and they matched each other, game for game, to a 6-6 standoff. In the tiebreaker, they reached a 5-5 tie. Gabby won the sixth point but Marcel, drawing upon his power, managed to take the next two.

  The wind gusted just as Marcel was about to take the set with an easy forehand volley. It jammed the ball into his body and caused him to drive it into the tape. Deprived of victory, he overcompensated and sent the next ball wide to Gabby’s forehand side, and the second behind the back line. With the tables now turned, Gabby approached victory. As first drops of rain spotted the concrete, she positioned herself to serve for the match.

  She adjusted her feet at the base line and bounced the ball; she had only to plant the ball above her head and strike. But at the last moment, she stopped short and shouted, “Hey, how about calling this a tie? Let’s get these racquets under cover before the rain ruins our strings.”

  Marcel gazed up to evaluate the danger and then looked at his teammates, who were joking about his impending defeat. “Yeah,” he cried back. “My strings are new.”

  There was no shelter from the cold rain, so Gabby invited the boys for burgers. They accepted eagerly and, since none had their own vehicle, happily piled into her Jeep. Marcel remained silent, obviously daunted by the near defeat.

  At the Burger King, the hungry players ordered double burgers, large Cokes, and large orders of fries. Gabby, who had never developed a taste for fast foods, ordered a large Diet Coke and a fish sandwich.

  “Has somebody been assigned to coach the tennis team?” she asked, once they were seated in a booth.

  Diamond Moore, his mouth full of sandwich, replied, “Naw, and it ain’t gonna happen. The admin don’t care about tennis. Basketball is king; tennis is shit. We only get sweet talk. Besides, there ain’t nobody who knows anything about the game to coach us.” Bobbing heads confirmed to Gabby that there was little disagreement on that point.

  “Suppose I call Dr. Shaboya? Think that would do any good?” she asked.

  Horace Sklar aimed a French fry in her direction. “No offense, but you think they will listen to a white lady? No way. We gotta keep the team going by ourselves. We got plans.”

  Listening to their enthusiasm, she was transported back to her own high school days. She’d had youthful dreams of her own then and finding out how many were rooted in sand had been painful. What these boys didn’t need right now, she thought, was a dose of bitter reality.

  “Fellows,” she said, framing the idea as she spoke, “I’d like to hear your opinions of an idea that keeps washing through my brain. Will you tell me what you think?”

  All three were silent with confusion. As far as they could remember, nobody had solicited their opinions before, particularly no white lady rabbi.

  “Well?” she waited.

  “What’cha got in mind?” Diamond asked.

  “What I want to know is if you think that a tennis center in Anacostia—you know, a real tennis center, with lots of courts, grandstands, and locker rooms—would develop more interest in the sport?”

  “Sure would,” Marcel responded, slowly emerging from his disappointment. “But nobody’s got the money for a center.”

  “Suppose we build it in Bart Skulkin’s memory? I know some rich people who might donate money. But it depends on whether your school would support the idea.”

  As self-appointed spokesman, Horace Sklar almost snorted. “If you got the greenbacks, I promise Dr. S
haboya got the interest,” he said. “That old geezer’s always licking his chops for money.”

  “Would a tennis center draw new players from the neighborhood?”

  “Maybe,” Diamond Moore shot back before Horace Sklar could answer. “Bringing big time black players here would help, too.”

  Gabby let them talk themselves out “Think about it, please,” she requested. “I’ll try to make your practice again next week.” She grinned widely, revealing her dimples, “Any of you hot shots want to try running my white ass around the courts then?”

  No one made a joke this time. Horace and Diamond knew she would beat them and remained conspicuously quiet. Silence from his teammates forced Marcel to accept the challenge.

  Dusk had fallen by the time they left the restaurant. Gabby offered to drive the young men home, but none of the three accepted. She hoped they simply lived nearby and felt comfortable walking, but it occurred to her they might be embarrassed at not having regular homes. Marcel might not be the only one who had to find a new place, with a relative or friend, to sleep each night.

  The rain had stopped, but the air was still dense and humid. The few working streetlights provided only weak illumination and the darkness seemed eerie. As she walked to her car, Gabby noticed that a new population had replaced those who left with the sun. A statuesque black woman, elaborately coiffed and wearing a skin-tight bodysuit and very high heels, made her way across the parking lot. She joined another woman in a leather jacket and, apparently, little else. As quickly as possible, Gabby got into her Jeep and set the door locks. She turned on the light above the dashboard to check her directions to Minnesota Avenue and the entrance to Fort Dupont Park.

  From Good Hope Road she turned right into a moderately well lit thoroughfare. Men lined the edge of the road, occasionally flagging down cars and taking money passed through the passenger windows. What was transferred in exchange she could not make out. A tall, lanky man, with a menacing face and long arms, stepped in front of her Jeep. She instinctively pumped the accelerator and swerved around him into the opposite lane. An approaching vehicle blasted its horn as she moved back into her own lane.