I wondered where Naomi Gersh would fit into all of this.
“So who wrote the Torah?” Mercer asked, smiling at the good-natured rabbi.
“Most Conservatives believe it was written by humans, but divinely inspired. Here at the seminary, I’d say our feet are firmly planted in two places—tradition and modernity. We maintain the tradition of prayer, but we’ve been known to reinterpret it.”
The secretary closed the door.
“So on to Naomi Gersh. That’s what you want to talk about.”
“Thanks, Zev. Yes, yes it is,” I said. “Was she enrolled here?”
“No, she wasn’t. Although we are rather small,” Levy said, “we offer a diverse number of programs. We have three professional schools for students with college degrees. One is for rabbinical training, another is for cantors, and the third is a more generally Jewish education. We offer an undergraduate degree as well. Naomi hadn’t made up her mind to apply to that, to devote herself to a course of study. But she sought us out to explore the idea of coming to school here. She liked our mission, I think.”
“And what is that?” Mercer asked.
“A learned and passionate study of Judaism. I’d say our vision joins faith with inquiry. We strive to service Jewish communities and strengthen traditions.”
“What about Israel?” I asked. “Did Naomi talk about her time there?”
Levy bowed his head. “Most definitely. Our movement has intense involvement with the society and state of Israel. That’s probably why Naomi came here to begin with.”
“How long ago was that?” I tried to keep eye contact with Levy while Mercer took notes.
“Maybe four months ago. Sometime in December, I believe. The first course she signed up for started in January, in the new semester. That’s how I got to know her. I taught the class. Jewish Philosophical Thought.”
“Tell us about Naomi, please. Anything you can remember, no matter how insignificant it may seem to you.”
Zev Levy stroked his chin with his hand. “My first impression of her was about how much a loner she seemed to be. The graduate students here are an exceptional group. Brilliant, many of them, and scholars all. Some are more vigorously and intellectually engaged with the others, while some are more intense and reflective. Naomi wasn’t in either league. While she remained remote, it wasn’t because of an inward spirituality.”
“What, then? Did you attribute it to anything?”
“There was a sadness she carried with her,” the rabbi said. “A sadness she wore like a weight around her neck.”
“Was she close to any of the other students?”
Levy shook his head. “Not that I’m aware. They’ve set me up to talk with you because I probably spent more time with Naomi—and that’s not a lot—than anyone else.”
“Did she confide in you, Zev?” I didn’t want him to invoke the clergy-penitent privilege. I wasn’t looking for Naomi’s admissions of wrongdoing, if there were any, and I didn’t believe they would survive her death. I wanted to know if she trusted him with any personal information that would be of use to us.
“You mean as a rabbi?” He knew exactly where I was going. There was no privilege if she had merely leaned on him as a friend. “Not that way. Sometimes she would come to me with questions about things I’d said in class. Then she’d linger to get to what was really on her mind.”
“What kind of things?”
“She was still haunted, of course, by what had happened to her mother. That tested all the depths of her religion and beliefs, into politics, back to threatening her faith completely, over to obsessing about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. You know about her protests?”
“Maybe not as much as you do,” Mercer said.
“No, don’t assume I got any substance out of her on that. Naomi was just proud of her activism. Much of it was sincere, although I think some of it was a way of calling attention to herself.”
“What’s the role of women here at JTS, Zev?” I asked. “How are they accepted in the Conservative movement?”
“That’s a good question, Alex. You might not get the same answer from any two people. It’s not like you Reformers, who have been much more welcoming to women and to gays. It’s one of the topics that drew fire from Naomi.”
I was beginning to flesh out a better picture of her. She had been thrust into the outcast role early on by her life circumstances. But she also seemed to have grown comfortable in that skin.
“Have you ordained women as rabbis?”
“We have. But only for the last twenty-five years. I don’t think Naomi had the intellectual rigor to go there, but she was fascinated by the feminist role in religion. Women as clergy have emerged from a grassroots push, after a very long debate. Now about thirty percent of our rabbinical students are female.”
“Does that still cause division in the ranks?” I asked.
“Not here, I don’t think. But you will find many Jews—just as you will in every Christian denomination—who don’t believe that women belong in this role. Didn’t you face that in your work?”
“Not openly, Zev. Not my generation of litigators.” But I knew that the women who had come before me in the law, as in many careers, had faced insurmountable obstacles simply getting through the door of the courtroom. Even legendary prosecutors like Frank Hogan thought that trial work was too tawdry for lady lawyers. “Did Naomi come up against any of that here?”
“Not that I know. I hope you’ll look in at our synagogue on your way out. You’ll see the balconies that existed so that women were seated separately from the men in the old days. They couldn’t have dreamed at that time of leading services.”
“And now?”
“There are always a couple of students who arrive believing they won’t have to participate with women. It’s no longer possible here.”
“Did Naomi clash with any of them?”
“I can ask about that. She liked to argue. Maybe she thought she was debating, but I’d say the better word is argument, in her case. I don’t think she made enemies here. No particular friends, although the dean is asking around about that. But no real enemies.”
“Do you know anything about Naomi’s social life? Did she date anyone here?”
Zev blushed as he answered. “That’s outside my calling. I simply wouldn’t know.”
“Nothing you observed in her actions with other students? Nothing she said?”
“I had the impression there was a man in her life. Not here at JTS. I had the sense that he was somewhat older than she. That there was something inappropriate about the relationship, or she might have been more open in discussing it with me.”
I saw Mercer jotting down notes. He must have wondered, as I did, how serious Naomi’s involvement with Daniel’s stepfather was, and whether it had been ongoing in the recent past.
“Did she ever talk with you about her brother?”
“This is the first I’m hearing she had any siblings. Naomi never mentioned him.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“One week ago, to this very day. My course is given on Wednesday, and she had missed it. I saw her in the library and asked if she was okay. She didn’t usually cut classes.”
“Did she tell you why she had?”
Zev Levy blushed again. “I’m sorry that our last conversation was a bit confrontational. She didn’t like answering to me. She thought I was prying. Perhaps she thought I was—how would you say? …” He looked at Mercer and raised his shoulders.
“Coming on to her?”
“Maybe so. I can assure you that I was not. But she snapped when I asked how come she had cut class if everything was okay.”
“She got short with you?” I said.
“I misspoke. Out of character for me, by hindsight. Completely out of line.”
The earnest young rabbi seemed shaken by the recollection.
“Naomi told me she had a friend who was ill—a guy. She said something ab
out the fact that he was being treated at Bellevue. I should have just left it at that.”
Bellevue was a city hospital, the oldest public medical facility in the country. It had a grim history and was not a place in which you wanted a loved one to wind up. Bellevue was best known as a psychiatric facility for the indigent.
“What did she say about her friend?” I asked.
“She wouldn’t talk to me about him after I opened my mouth. ‘What is he crazy, this guy?’ I should have held my tongue before speaking. I just couldn’t think of anyone being treated at Bellevue except a psych case. ‘What do you need with a madman?’ That’s the last thing I said to her.”
TWENTY-ONE
ZEV Levy had walked us back to the building entrance. Before we said good-bye, he had something else to tell us, a bit sheepishly. “I want you to know that I called Naomi a few times over last weekend. I left messages at her home.”
Mike had checked the answering machine at the apartment. There was nothing on it, whether because she had picked up the calls herself or because Daniel had listened and erased them.
“The tech guys in the PD will be able to retrieve those,” Mercer said, half bluff and half wishful thinking. “Remember what you said?”
Levy shifted uncomfortably. “I—uh—I think I just apologized for being so rude. That’s right, I offered to meet her for coffee too. I did try to make a—uh—an appointment.”
“At school?”
He reddened again. “No, down near her apartment. But she never returned my calls. And then, of course—well, the murder. I never saw her again. Maybe I wasn’t so far off when I called her friend a madman.”
“Thanks for your time,” Mercer said. “The Homicide Squad will probably send a few detectives over to talk with some of the students. We’ll try not to intrude too much.”
“Whatever is necessary. We’re very willing to cooperate.”
We made our way back toward Mercer’s car. “You think the rabbi was trying to make an appointment,” Mercer asked, “or a date? Bad choice of words today, that he should have held his ‘tongue.’ ”
“I get that he’s nervous, and that any involvement in a murder case is an extreme situation for Rabbi Levy and for the seminary,” I said. “But it certainly sounds like he had more than a professional attraction to Naomi. Can you push the lieutenant to get some guys up here for a more thorough interview?”
“That and scoring his phone records for starters.”
“I hate how this job makes me distrust everybody. I mean, maybe he was just picking up on her despondency.”
“And maybe he was just picking up on her, Alex. Gotta check it out.”
“I know we do, but sometimes it’s the worst part of my work. Makes me wish I’d been a prima ballerina,” I said, giving a tug to the sleeve of Mercer’s black leather jacket.
Both of us reached for our cell phones to check for messages. It was almost one in the afternoon. I held mine at arm’s length while Pat McKinney railed at me at the top of his lungs for not sticking around to give him details about the morning’s murder. Rose Malone, calling on Battaglia’s behalf, made the same complaint with more dignity.
“Hot water?” Mercer asked.
“Tepid. It will come to a boil by the end of the day, I’m sure. McKinney will be in the front office stirring the pot to try to nail me. Nothing from Mike about the autopsy?”
“Should be done by now,” Mercer said, checking his watch. “One from Special Victims. The serial rapist in the transit system hit again. Brooklyn, this time. And Vickee, warning me that headquarters is getting hell from the mayor’s office about these cases. He doesn’t want any more bodies in churchyards, can you imagine?”
“I need to be careful what I wish for,” I said as the phone vibrated in my hand and Mike’s number came up on the screen. “And the mayor better pray a little harder. Hello?”
“Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?”
“What?” I hadn’t heard that question since reruns of Groucho Marx went off the air.
“You heard me. Grant’s Tomb. Who’s buried there? And why don’t you smile when you see me?”
My head jerked and I looked up the steep hill we were climbing as we crossed Broadway going west. I couldn’t help but break into a grin and wave when I saw Mike at the top.
“Ulysses S. Grant, Detective Chapman.”
“Half right.”
“And Julia Boggs Dent-Grant. First Lady. Beloved wife.”
“Cross-eyed, she was. D’you know that surgeons wanted to correct her crossed eyes when she moved to the White House? But General Grant said he liked her just that way.”
“You ought to learn some tolerance from Ulysses’s attitude, Mikey. Why are you here?”
“Came to pay my respects to the general.”
Mercer and I continued due west, up the steep incline and across Riverside Drive, where the wide expanse of the Hudson River opened up below the stately granite and marble monument—the second largest mausoleum in the Western Hemisphere—built by a mourning nation as a tribute to Grant’s leadership to save the Union.
We sat on the great steps, catching the sunlight that brightened the dull March landscape, flooding the area between the two huge sculpted eagles that guarded the tomb.
“Any surprises at Naomi’s autopsy?”
Mike was halfway into a ham-and-cheese sandwich. He’d brought a second one for Mercer and a yogurt for me. “Nope.”
“Signs of sexual assault?”
“Inconclusive. No seminal fluid. Minor bruising on the thighs, but that could have come during a struggle anyway.”
“Mercy, mercy.”
“How can you say that, Mr. Wallace?” Mike asked. “You see any mercy in this matter? You think it was such a blessing to be beheaded by a dull hatchet?”
“The ME says that’s what the weapon was?” I asked.
“Let’s leave it at the fact that it wasn’t such a clean slice. He’s not sure what kind of blade, but it might have done with a good sharpening. Probably same one as for this new victim. Naomi’s killer didn’t get the job done with just one strike.”
“Any thoughts about drugs? That maybe Naomi was unconscious before she was mutilated?”
“I hope it’s the case for both women, but tox won’t be ready for at least a week.”
The complicated tests for toxicological finds in the blood and tissue were impossible to be rushed. It often took weeks, depending on the substance tested for, to get an answer to whether drugs were present and in what amounts.
“Did Chirico have anything to add?” I asked. Not that there were any good thoughts to have about this case.
“Not yet. Wound himself up in this one tighter than a tick on a dog’s ear. He doesn’t like anybody screwing with the Mother Church. The guy won’t budge from his desk. What’d you get?”
Mercer repeated what Rabbi Levy had told us about Naomi Gersh. All of it fit with her brother’s description of her as a pariah, and of her profound loneliness as she struggled to find a way to live her life. He also noted the rabbi’s apparent interest in helping Naomi relieve some of that gloom by suggesting a date.
“Then there’s this Bellevue piece,” Mercer said. “If you ask me, Naomi’s quirks were growing on the rabbi. She might have pushed back because she thought he was coming on to her. She told him she had a friend she had to see who’d been sick. Said he’d been at Bellevue.”
“A veritable whackjob? Now we’re talking,” Mike said.
“I thought I’d ride down there and rattle some cages. We have a pretty specific window. Naomi told the rabbi about this guy last week, and if he’s a Bellevue psych patient, I can start to look at discharges in the days before the murder—”
“And escapes. Eyeball the escapes too.”
“You’re going to need a subpoena. I’ll cut you a few when I get down to the office.”
“Ask one of your posse to do it for him right now,” Mike said. The stunning team of lawyers who worke
d Special Victims—Nan Toth, Catherine Dashfer, Marisa Bourges—would drop most of what they were doing to back up Mike and Mercer on any case. “I’m going to take you for a ride, Coop.”
“Where?”
“The Bronx. I got a hunch.”
“About Naomi?”
“No. About a church.”
“I wouldn’t dream of crossing you on that subject. Mercer, when you get to Bellevue, you should think about the emergency room too.”
New York had some of the finest private medical centers in the world, including the New York University facility adjacent to Bellevue. But cops knew the best trauma treatment was in the ERs at hospitals one would never choose for open-heart surgery: Harlem, Metropolitan, and Bellevue.
“Already doing that. Maybe Naomi didn’t like the rabbi calling her friend crazy ’cause she didn’t think he was crazy. Could have been at Bellevue for an injury. Treated and released.”
“Maybe he was giving his machete a practice run,” Mike said. “Hurt himself in the process. Or drugs.”
There were scores of people a day in and out of the Bellevue ER. Hundreds more who were in outpatient programs or coming in to receive meds. If you wanted to do one-stop shopping for the mentally ill in Manhattan, this hospital was the place to start.
“I’ll go straight to administration. Will you call Laura and ask her to fax up the subpoenas?”
“Right now.”
“Coop’s office at six tonight?” Mercer asked.
“Deal.”
Once again we went in separate directions, Mercer downtown and Mike and I heading due east to take the Triborough Bridge to the Bronx.
“You’re not telling me where?”
“No secret. It’s a long shot, not a secret. I’m taking you to my alma mater. The old church there—St. John’s—may have a clue or two.”
“Another St. John’s?” I asked. “Obviously not the Divine this time?”
“Nope. Just a little parish church built in the Bronx way before that one got under way.”
Mike had majored in history at Fordham University, one of the premier Jesuit institutions in the country. While the school had expanded its campuses into Manhattan, the original Rose Hill site was where Mike had studied.
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