Yom Kippur Murder

by Lee Harris

  “I don’t know if I can—”

  “How is your brother Warren, Mr. Finch?”

  I heard him breathe. “That was you, wasn’t it?” he asked.

  “It certainly was.”

  “My brother only wanted to buy a book.”

  “I’ll probably be called to testify,” I said. “And I’m sure you know I was assaulted in 603 on Sunday night.”

  “I don’t know anything about that,” he said crisply. Then, in a different voice, “Look—Miss Bennett—I’ll see what I can do.”

  “That’s all I ask.”

  “Did he go for it?” Ian asked when I got off the phone.

  “He’s giving it a lot of thought, Ian. Did I say anything I shouldn’t have?”

  “God bless you, girl. I wouldn’t have cut a single word.”

  Joseph was already in Celia’s apartment when I got there, and I smelled coffee brewing as she opened the door. We greeted each other warmly and sat talking over coffee and lovely little cakes that Celia had indeed left for us. Joseph is a tall, handsome woman. She is bright and sharp and compassionate. I have known her and loved her since that terrible night fifteen years ago when Aunt Meg left me at St. Stephen’s amid tears and recriminations. I went from child to adult under Joseph’s watchful eye, and she has been a source of strength to me when I needed one.

  She was serving her first elected term as General Superior, and I expected her to be elected to a second term when this one was through.

  When we had finished our gossiping, she asked me how I was coming and what I was doing. They were questions I had hoped she would ask.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said. “I’ve become involved in a murder investigation.”

  From the look on her face, she seemed to be both pleased and interested. “Let’s sit in the living room,” she said. “And tell me all about it.”

  I told her much more than I had told Franciotti. I included my feeling that Nathan had had an affair in the fifties, and I told her about Amelia Paterno. In fact, I told her everything, including what had happened yesterday at Bettina Strauss’s. When it seemed that I might be skipping over details, she stopped me and asked me not to rush. All I omitted was Jack and my relationship with him, a part of my life that I now considered supremely private.

  When I finished, she sat very still, not looking at me, not looking at anything. Finally she said, “I’m interested in what you chose to tell me and what you chose not to tell me.”

  “I told you everything. I can’t think of one thing I’ve left out.”

  “They were all facts, Chris. You related events. This happened, then that happened, then something else. I felt as though you were reading your notebook to me. You’re very good at description. I can see that bloody apartment in that vacant, rat-infested building. I love that little man, Greenspan, who counts the sunsets he watches in his old age and answers questions with questions of his own. And of course, that’s all necessary to understand the situation, but you’ve left out the most important part. You never said one word about how you feel about Mr. Herskovitz.”

  “I loved him, Joseph.” It was the first time I had ever said it, and the first time I had thought about it, the first time I had really known it. Hearing my own words, I knew it was true. I felt tears come to my eyes.

  “Yes,” Joseph said with satisfaction. “And why did you love him?”

  “He talked to me. Not the way Gallagher does with his complaints and his stories about the way things used to be, over and over. Nathan conversed, he asked questions, he listened. I learned from him, and I think he learned from me. I found books in his night table that I had recommended. I guess in some ways he was the perfect grandfather, and I was the perfect granddaughter. We weren’t related, there were no ties between us, and we owed each other nothing. When we spent time together, it was because we wanted to.”

  “I begin to see him now,” Joseph said. “Tell me, how do you feel about his relationship with Mrs. Paterno?”

  “If it started after his wife died, it doesn’t bother me at all. If it went on while she was alive, it troubles me.”

  “Do you intend to tell his children about his relationship with Mrs. Paterno?”

  “No. I don’t see any need to. It really isn’t their business.”

  “Exactly. Was his first family their business?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “In other words, two intelligent people might have differing opinions on that, and we might find something in both points of view to agree with.”

  “Very likely.”

  “Think about it, Chris. We’re not talking about truths and untruths; we’re talking about discretion. Perhaps you’ve been asking all the right questions but about the wrong person.”

  I stared at her, and suddenly it all made sense.

  22

  I tried Bettina’s number before I left Celia’s apartment, but there was no answer. I left a note for Celia that I wanted to stay over on Saturday night, and then Joseph and I left, Joseph to get a taxi to Grand Central, I to ransom my car from a very expensive parking garage.

  On Wednesday morning I called Bettina and asked if I might come in and talk to her. I had forgotten to give her back my “wedding ring,” but it was more than that; there are things I can’t say on the telephone. I needed to see her face-to-face.

  I got down to the area by ten, an awkward time to find a space. I wove in and out of streets, one way in this direction, the other way in that, with no luck. I didn’t want to park on Broadway because I’d have to come back in an hour and feed the meter. It was one pressure I could do without today.

  I went over to Riverside Drive and Eighty-first and drove slowly south. Just below Seventy-ninth a small car was pulling out, and I got the space. It would be a healthy walk to Bettina’s, but a walk has never daunted me.

  I locked the car and started south. Across the street, in front of an apartment house, an ambulance stood at the curb. As I approached it, I started to get an uncomfortable feeling.

  It was standing in front of Mr. Greenspan’s building. That gave me more than a chill. I crossed the street and started running. A dog walker and a couple of women were standing in front of the building. There was no one in the ambulance.

  “Do you know who it is?” I asked, addressing all of them.

  “Nah,” the dog walker said. “They should be bringing him down pretty soon. They’ve been here a while.”

  The women looked at me but said nothing.

  I stood watching the glass doors. Finally I saw them, two attendants and a stretcher on wheels. The dog walker and one of the women got to the doors before me, opened them, and held them.

  The attendants pulled the stretcher out onto the sidewalk and left it while they went to the ambulance. Feeling a little queasy, I walked closer to see who it was wrapped in all that linen.

  Two familiar bright eyes peered at me.

  “Mr. Greenspan,” I said.

  “You.”

  “Yes, it’s me, Chris.”

  “I know who you are. You’re too early.”

  “For what?”

  “For the sunset. It’s still morning.”

  I forced a smile. “I’ll come back next week. Is that all right?”

  “Next week is fine. I’ll be home. It’s just a little pain. They think it’s a heart attack, but it’s not, and nobody listens to me. What do they know? Listen, the murderer. He didn’t call back.”

  The crew returned, and one of them asked me to leave. They started moving the stretcher to the open back of the ambulance.

  “It’s all right, Mr. Greenspan,” I said, walking beside them, to the annoyance of the self-important nearer crew member. “We got him. Yesterday afternoon. You have nothing to worry about.”

  The last I saw of him was a big smile.

  I waited till the ambulance drove off. It was from St. Luke’s, and I made a note to call. Then I walked down toward Seventy-second Street with a heavy heart. I hoped t
hey would give him a room facing west.

  * * *

  Bettina refused to take the ring back. “It’s too small for me,” she said. “You it fits perfectly. It’s a nice ring. You should wear a little gold.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Did we get the two that killed Nathan?”

  “I don’t know. The little man, Ramirez, may not even have been in New York that day. And I can hardly imagine the book man doing something like that himself.”

  “So it was for nothing?”

  “It isn’t very clear yet. The book man may have been behind the murder, even if he didn’t do it himself. And he must have had someone break into Nathan’s apartment last week to steal the address book. I’ll call Sergeant Franciotti later and see if he’s found out anything.”

  I told her about Mr. Greenspan, and she called the hospital, but he hadn’t even cleared the emergency room yet. She looked genuinely worried, and I assured her he was in excellent spirits.

  Eventually I had to come to the point of my visit. “I asked you a lot of questions,” I said, “and I think you were honest with me.”

  “I was.” She smiled.

  “I have another one.” I didn’t smile. I felt tense and excited and a little nervous. “You knew Hannah Herskovitz?”

  “We all knew each other.”

  “Was Hannah involved with another man before her death?”

  I thought I heard a little moan from her. She wasn’t smiling anymore. “I learned a long time ago, you only answer the question they ask you. You never add anything. It just gets you in trouble. How did you know about Hannah?”

  “I didn’t.” But I knew it now, and I could feel my skin tingling. “Did Nathan know?”

  “He must have. Yes, Nathan knew. He was no fool.”

  “He must have been devastated.” I threw it out and waited.

  “He was.” Her voice was faltering. She had shared his pain.

  “Did it go on for long?”

  “Long enough.”

  “She was younger than Nathan, wasn’t she?”

  “A little.” She said it grudgingly.

  “Ten years? Twenty?”

  She nodded. “Fifteen, sixteen, I don’t know.”

  “Maybe that was the reason, Bettina,” I said softly.

  “Age isn’t a reason for doing what she did. He was such a good man, a handsome man, a generous, kind person. He loved her, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s why he never told the children.”

  “He let his daughter hate him so that he wouldn’t have to tell her the truth about her mother.”

  Bettina nodded. She was weeping now. “The only thing, he couldn’t bring himself to go to her funeral.”

  I took her out for lunch. After a while she was able to talk about it calmly. Hannah’s death had pretty much ended the circle. Nathan wouldn’t attend anymore, and small dissensions had arisen. The good friendships remained, but the big, happy get-togethers were over.

  I wanted to know who it was. Having come this far, I felt I needed to know everything. She would not tell me. At first she pretended not to know. When it became clear that she did, she just said it was the past and no good could be served by telling me. I walked her back to her apartment house and left her.

  Passing Mr. Greenspan’s building, I decided to drive up to St. Luke’s and inquire about him. Maybe they would let me visit.

  I found a meter on Amsterdam Avenue above 110th Street and walked up to the hospital. The woman at the desk had some trouble finding his name, which scared me, but she did finally and said he was in stable condition but could not have visitors today. I left a message for him, which she promised to deliver.

  I went back to the car and drove to Broadway. There was an entrance to the highway at 125th Street, which I had never used but which I would now try to find. I turned right on Broadway and started uptown. There were college kids in the streets and collegey-type shops on Broadway. Columbia covered a huge section from 114th up to 120th. At least one of the mourners at Nathan’s funeral lived up here. I pulled over to the curb next to a hydrant and took out my list. Weiss, Professor and Mrs. Herbert. The address was Claremont Avenue, which my map had shown as a street only a few blocks long between Broadway and Riverside Drive starting at 116th Street. That was just up ahead.

  I made a left on 116th and a right on Claremont. University buildings lined the right-hand side of the street, and old apartment houses the left. I found the Weisses’ building and parked at another hydrant. Nothing else seemed available.

  I sat back, considering. What would I ask them? I knew about the books now, I knew about Professor Black’s deception, I knew about Hannah’s infidelity. If Nathan had wanted to keep that quiet, I couldn’t in good conscience go blathering about it. These people would know or they wouldn’t know. What difference would it make?

  What I wanted was to know who the man was, to see if he somehow fit into Nathan’s murder. Possibly she had met someone who once lived in 603 and had long since moved. I just didn’t have the resources to trace all the families who had lived there, and I was not about to interview a bunch of elderly widows to find out whether one of their husbands had had an affair with Hannah Herskovitz thirty-five years ago.

  I thought about my delightful friend, Hillel Greenspan. He had said Hannah was sick. That’s how you protect someone, isn’t it? I thought. Say they’re sick. You can even believe it. Anyone who would cheat on Nathan Herskovitz is sick. Anyone who would commit suicide is sick.

  He knew, but he wouldn’t tell me, and I couldn’t ask him, not with his health so precarious. Besides, it was unlikely that he was the man. He was as old as Nathan, give or take a couple of years. Hannah was younger, much younger.

  I took my notebook and pencil out of my bag. Suppose she was fifteen to twenty years younger than Nathan. In 1945, when they met, she would have been twenty-two or twenty-three to his forty. Fourteen years later when she committed suicide, she would have been about thirty-six.

  I thought momentarily of Zilman and rejected him. He was too disgusting a man for a young, lovely woman to have had an affair with, whatever his age. In the circle no one else would have been the right age at that time. The only other person I knew, H. K. Granite, had told me he had been “fairly young” before the war. It had been his parents whom Nathan had had a friendship with, his parents who had been given one of the Herskovitz books. Granite, still living at home with his folks, had participated in the circle only when it met at his parents’ apartment. Hannah was not likely to have had an affair with a kid.

  So that was it. Unless I twisted Bettina’s arm or provoked a heart attack in Hillel Greenspan, I had come to the end of my search.

  There was a knock on my car window, and I jumped, startled. A blue uniform stood next to my car, and in my side-view mirror I could see a blue-and-white car double-parked just behind me. I rolled the window down.

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to move your car. You’re parked next to a hydrant,” the policeman said.

  “I’m sorry, Officer. I was just thinking.”

  I could feel him judging my sanity. “Somewhere else, please,” he said.

  “OK.” I rolled the window back up and started the motor. After a long block, I came to a cross street and turned left. One more block and I was on Riverside Drive. I drove north, toward home. Up ahead was Grant’s Tomb.

  I went slowly, still trying to figure it out. Nathan was eighty-five, Granite was seventy, Hannah … Granite was seventy. If he was seventy, he was fifteen years younger than Nathan. But Hannah was fifteen to twenty years younger than Nathan. That meant they were the same age or Hannah was a little younger than he.

  Then what had he meant about being a youngster before the war? I thought suddenly about my students, eighteen and nineteen-year-olds who yesterday morning had seemed so young compared to me, and I was only thirty. Of course he was a youngster before the war. He was eighteen or nineteen years old!

&nb
sp; At the north end of Grant’s Tomb, which sits on an island in the middle of Riverside Drive, you can elect to continue north or swing around the island and go back south. I made the swing, drove back to 116th Street, my heart beating crazily, and over to Broadway. I found a pay phone right on that corner, double-parked, and ran out. As I dialed, I kept an eye on the car.

  It rang a few times, and then Granite’s voice came on. “This is H. K. Granite. If you leave your name and number—”

  I hung up, went back to the car, and turned onto Broadway, going south. At 106th Street, Broadway bends east, to your left. If you continue straight, you enter West End Avenue. That’s what I did. I drove until I found a place to park, then walked to Granite’s address. I rang, but there was no answer. I found a corner where I would be out of the way and I waited.

  It was nearly an hour before he arrived. He entered the outer foyer without seeing me and went straight to the locked door with his key.

  “Mr. Granite.”

  He turned abruptly. It took a moment before he recognized me. “What do you want?” he asked brusquely.

  “I need to talk to you,” I said. “I have a few questions.”

  “Ask them here. I have things to do upstairs.”

  “I don’t think this is the place.”

  “I’m a busy man.”

  “It’s about Hannah.”

  He controlled himself well, but I think he knew that I had found out. In fact, I was the nervous one. All I had was a little arithmetic and a wild guess whose proof was in the past.

  He unlocked the door and held it for me without saying anything. During the elevator ride, he was quiet. When we got to his apartment, he dropped his hat and coat on a chair in the foyer but didn’t offer to take mine. Again. We went into the living room.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I have some questions about Hannah Herskovitz.”

  “What makes you think I could answer them? I told you, I wasn’t even a member of the circle. It was my parents who were.”

  I took my best shot first. “You were her lover.”