by Leslie Glass
"When the girl was on the stretcher, and they were about to wheel her out, the boy's father reached over and pulled the ring off her finger." Rabbi Levi put a liver-spotted hand over his eyes.
"The ring?"
"The engagement ring," he said impatiently, as if she were some kind of oaf who didn't know that nice people had two rings.
"Did anyone try to stop him?"
"No, no. He did it quickly. The ring fit the girl's left hand, but it was big on her right hand. Ribikoff yanked it off and put it in his pocket." He shook his head. "I've seen many disputes over property of deceased loved ones in my time, but I have never seen anybody grab a piece of jewelry off a dying girl." He looked shocked all over again.
April, however, had seen these tilings. She'd seen two sobbing relatives on the street stop grieving long enough to fight over which should get the watch of the man just murdered in front of them. She'd seen a widow, out of control on the scene of a traffic accident in which her husband had died, suddenly notice with pleasure that her best friend who'd emerged from the crash unscathed was wearing the diamond bracelet she'd wanted for her birthday.
"Do you think the ring has any relevance?" she asked.
"No, probably not. You just asked me about the people who were there, and I was thinking that the boy's people are from Brooklyn. I don't have much information about them, don't even know how Suri found them. The mothers don't always seek my advice in these matters. The women, they do it their own way." He went on, after a reflective pause. "I can tell you it was a large function. We have so many happy occasions to celebrate here, a bar mitzvah or a wedding almost every week. But this was the most elaborate party we've ever had here. Too bad, too bad." Rabbi Levi leaned back in his chair, contemplating the irony of a murder occurring at the most elaborate function the synagogue had ever had.
"Rabbi, tell me about the Schoenfelds."
He shook his head. "What is there to say? They are a wonderful family, very observant, generous people." He spread his fingers and touched his newspaper with a pinkie.
"You must have known Tovah well."
"Yes, since she was born. A very sweet girl, a wonderful girl." He nodded as if to confirm that to himself.
"What was she like?"
"Like?" He seemed puzzled by the question.
"Her personality, her likes and dislikes. Her hopes and dreams for her life with her husband. Did she love him? Was she excited?"
His features didn't register this line of questioning.
"Did she have boyfriends, someone who might have been disappointed?" April tried again.
"No, no, no," he answered sharply. "I told him yesterday." He pointed at Mike. "She was a good girl. No boyfriends. She didn't know anyone outside of here."
April had the feeling Tovah's spiritual leader hadn't known her very well, or maybe hadn't liked her. It was just a feeling.
"Somebody didn't like her enough to kill her, Rabbi. Somebody didn't want her married."
He made an angry gesture with his hand. "The girl was eighteen years old. She was beautiful. Who wouldn't like her?"
April shifted in her chair. The girl was beautiful. That was all he could say. Was beauty a motive to kill? Well, sometimes it was.
"Tell me some more about your congregation. You have many wealthy members." She tried another tack.
"Wealthy, no. Comfortable maybe ..."
"But the Schoenfelds are wealthy."
The rabbi's fingers played with the newspaper. He glanced at Mike. It was clear he didn't want to talk to April. She waited, sweating a little at the snub. He was pale; he was small. He looked as if he hadn't eaten anything for a long rime. "When can we clean up?" he asked.
"Soon," she said. "Can you tell me anything more about the party?"
"Ah." He became more animated with that subject. "We try not to encourage too much display here. Competition excites envy. People get hurt feelings when they can't do for their children what their wealthier neighbors are doing. But what can you do when people want to share their good fortune?" Again the shoulders went up.
"You should have seen today. Our custom in funerals is the opposite of the joyous occasions. In death we are always simple, modest. The remains of our loved ones are washed by our own members. You'd be amazed the people who choose to do it. The remains are wrapped in white cloth. They go into the ground in a plain wooden box. Everyone the same." His eyes strayed for a moment directly into April's face, and she was surprised to find herself blushing. This was how the women must feel when the men took notice of them. Trapped for a moment in the light.
"We were at the funeral," she murmured. And competition was the same everywhere.
She thought of Ching's upcoming wedding at the Crystal Pavilion on Mott Street. In Chinatown there was the eight-course wedding, the twelve-course wedding, and the twenty-course wedding. Ching was having the twelve-course feast, and she planned to change her clothes three times while the guests stuffed themselves. No one would remember the last two dresses because they'd all be drunk by the time she got them on, but the photos would last forever.
During her years as a cop, April must have seen hundreds of wedding parties coming out of churches and temples all over the city. She'd seen the brides in their white gowns and the men in their tuxedos, but she knew very little about them.
"Can you tell me anything about the wedding that was unusual beyond the extravagance?" April asked.
"They had a wedding planner. That was unusual, since Suri Schoenfeld is such a competent woman."
"Why did they, do you know?"
"I don't know; that woman put everything out of proportion. There was bad feeling about it. The spending was crazy. They had real flowers, real silver. The girl had her own gown from some store in Manhattan. Party favors for everyone. Such a waste."
"I don't know your customs, Rabbi. How is it generally done?" April asked.
"With our large families most people don't go in for too many extras. The trend is for the girls to rent their gowns, use the caterer's centerpieces. They're not real flowers, but they look very good. They might have one or two arrangements of real flowers in the sanctuary. And of course, there's always lots of food." A small smile lit up his eyes at the mention of food.
April nodded. Just like Chinatown. In Chinatown flowers were for funerals. At weddings, the families of the happy couple gave a wedding feast with lots of Scotch or cognac, plum wine, beer, soda. The decorations consisted of a few red carnations set on red tablecloths. For special show there might be red-lacquered chopsticks instead of the generic wooden ones. Personalized banners with slogans for good luck and long life in Chinese characters hung from the ceiling and were stuck on the walls with Scotch tape. Everything was red and gold. And cash went from friends to happy couple. As much cash as possible. The guests went away drunk and full but not with gifts and party favors.
April remembered the baskets of candy, the large floral arrangements so strongly scented, both in the sanctuary and on the tables: the palm trees, the orange trees with real oranges on them, the silver flatware, the gold-rimmed crystal glasses, the blue Tiffany boxes at many of the seats. They'd had favors from Tiffany!
"This party must have excited a lot of envy," April murmured.
"A lot of talk," the rabbi admitted. "Usually our own people make our parties. We've never had trouble before."
Afterward, the two detectives conferred about what they'd learned. April didn't like the way the rabbi kept calling Tovah "the girl" and the groom "the boy," so she was careful to keep Tovah's name in her mind as she made notes to herself.
Fourteen
J
ust before five Louis the Suri King sent his assistant, Tito, out in the van with the completed order for the benefit at Tavern on the Green in Central Park. Then he collapsed in a damp heap on the green Victorian wrought-iron settee in his hothouse of a garden, angry as a hornet at Wendy Lotte.
The sun was as hot as summer. Usually he felt blessed that the to
wn houses around him were low enough for the sun to creep into all the corners of his walled refuge, but today he was exhausted and discouraged, so the heat seemed like just another blight on his world. Still, it was better outside than it would be inside, dealing with the ankle-deep mess of cut stems and leaves that Tito had left on the floor of the shop and Jama wasn't there to pick up because he'd gone to ground.
Louis did not want to be inside and visible to any hapless visitor who might want to get in to buy something. He was through for the day. If someone came and he was forced to speak, he would just scream. His irascibility had cost him bundles in the past, and he knew he mustn't revert to type because of a murder.
In the past Louis had done several funerals where the estate lawyers didn't get around to paying him for over a year because the IRS questioned the expense. He had a policy against working for dead people. And now he'd just sunk more than fifty-five thousand dollars into a wedding for a dead person. He was going to sit there, sweating and cursing Wendy Lotte, until she showed up and reassured him that his investment was not lost.
Louis the Sun King's shop consisted of the first floor and garden of a town house in the East Sixties between Lexington and Park. His establishment was surrounded by antique shops, jewelry shops, a high-end chocolatier, a lingerie boutique, a custom tailor, and a number of pricey restaurants frequented by Eurotrash with titles from long-defunct monarchies, social pretensions, and lots of money. It was close enough to Bloomingdale's, Williams-Sonoma, Caviar-teria, and Barneys for any kind of instant shoppmg pick-me-up, and Louis loved it.
Hardly any plants were for sale there. Garden antiques and collectible containers in many materials were for sale. Cement and bronze planters and painted Italian pottery that presently contained palm trees were for sale. Nineteenth-century Chinese export porcelain, Japanese Imari, sculptured Lalique, opaline, Venetian, and other forms of art-glass vases were for sale, as well as curios of all kinds and hard-to-identify objets d'art on lacquered Chinese and Italian mosaic tables. Screens that cleverly created cunning alcoves were for sale. The garden chairs around the large center table in the extension where the work of planning parties was done were not.
Last, in a corner of the shop, screened by a stand of bamboo in brass planters, Louis's boyfriend Jorge had set up a hair-coloring salon at one of the sinks Tito used for soaking and trimming flowers. Jorge recently commandeered the sink when he quit his job at one of the best hair salons in the city and refused to look for another.
Louis the Sun King was known for designing terrace gardens, greenhouse displays, weddings, benefits, and parties of all kinds. Two major hotels used his services for seasonal decorations of their lobbies. Nearly everything he did was a special order, and a lot of people who thought they knew the street well had no idea it contained a florist.
It was not a long wait. Wendy banged on the locked door at quarter past five. "Louie, Louie, it's me," she cried. Bang. Bang. Bang.
He buzzed her in. She marched through the shop and found him outside. Wendy Lotte was a tall, blond, self-important anorectic of impeccable credentials. She'd come up on Park Avenue. She'd graduated from Miss Porter's and Smith College. She'd been in the Sotheby's human resources department for a year after college, then worked for a giant PR company for five years after that as an event planner. She was keen on making a lot of money because her divorced parents had both married again, one more than once, and had new families to support. She was always expensively dressed and coiffed, and was attractive to people who liked fast-talking, slightly horsey, stiff-hipped kinds of girls.
"I've never had a day like this in my whole life." She sat and launched in without a pause. "You wouldn't have believed the scene there yesterday. Blood everywhere. People screaming, thinking it was another terrorist attack. It was so awful it was funny.
One woman's wig fell off, and she almost went crazy trying to find it. Hysteria beyond belief. All your little boys ran away, and that detective is harassing me. He called on my
cell
while I was with Prudence and Lucinda. Why do 1 have to take the flak?"
"Oh, please." Louie threw up a hand. "Wherever you are is trouble."
"No, really, Louie, this is not a joke. This Bronx idiot, with an accent so thick 1 can't understand a word, is harassing me."
Louis put his hand to his pompadour, smoothing it back. "Why?"
"I have no idea. He's a complete asshole. He doesn't like me, and I was perfectly nice to him until he tried to get into my purse."
"They searched your purse? Poor Wendy, you never learn."
"Oh, shut up, Louis. He didn't find anything. But this is all going to be in the papers. My name is coming up everywhere. You can't imagine how crazy it is. An agent called me twice while I was out with Pru and Lucinda. Somebody wants to do a TV movie. The
Enquirer
wants to pay me fifty thousand dollars for a story. 'Arranged marriage ends in murder. The wedding planner tells all.' Can you believe it?"
"Why not? It's a great story. That wretched girl was married like a cow." Louis fanned his face with a big hand.
"Louie, don't start with that."
He made an angry noise. "It was slavery, face it."
"Stop! You don't know anything about it."
Louis glared at her. "Anybody who knows that girl knows that the last thing she wanted was to marry."
"Not your business, Louie, just not your business."
"Well, did you shoot her? Or is your specialty cats?" He laughed.
Wendy leaned forward and grabbed his arm. "Look, Lori's on vacation this week. I'm alone in the office. I'm stressed beyond belief. Don't start with me."
"Hello, it's me, Wendy." He gazed at the sky. "Never forget how much I know about you."
"What are you talking about? Is this a threat?"
"No, no. But I don't need a spotlight on me right now."
"I gave you all this work. I thought we were friends. And now you're
blaming
me for a very unfortunate situation."
"Wendy, people want your story.
Hello,
now you've got the attention you've always craved. Your fifteen minutes of fame. How could I not be concerned—"
Wendy's face paled. "You shit!"
"Maybe. But I'm all you have. I'd say you were one of my riskiest projects." He gave her a bleak smile. "So. Tell me about Prudence Hay; is
she
going to make it to her wedding day?"
'You cold bastard." Wendy's eyes filled with tears. "How could you be so cruel when things are so crazy, and I'm under such pressure—without even
Lori
to help me?"
"Oh, please, look who's talking."
"It could have been you. It could have been any one of your boys. Don't look at me. Just don't look at me." Wendy covered her face. "I'm out of here," she announced. "I'm just gone. Don't try to call me. I hate you."
Fifteen
A
pril burst outside into the radiant, early-evening light, grateful for the sweet breeze off the Hudson River. The whole time she'd been in Rabbi Levi's office she'd felt a tightness in her chest, as if Tovah's angry ghost were still trapped in the place where she'd died.
The rabbi had used the word
terrible
many times. That was what stuck in April's mind as she and Mike drove the few short blocks to the Schoenfeld house on Alderbrook Road. It was a terrible thing to interview a family before a funeral. It was just as terrible to interview a family after a funeral. Tomorrow, next week. A year from now it would still be terrible.
"What did you think of the rabbi?" she asked Mike.
"He didn't know her," he replied instantly.
"That's what I thought. He really pinpointed the wedding planner. May be an angle there," April mused.
"Te quiero, te amo, querida,"
Mike said suddenly. He loved her.
"Como no?"
she murmured, m
eeting his eye with just about her first smile of the day.
Mike was a handsome, sexy man, and even though he'd criticized her earlier, he still loved her. The thought gave her a warm feeling in the middle of a mess. Bias, Bronx, and the Homicide Task Force were all taking a piece of this case. Mike was Homicide. She was the monkey in the middle. Hollis was already trying to steal their thunder. She'd have to watch him. And her boss, Lieutenant Iriarte, would be hoping for the worst. She had to find a way to let him in so he wouldn't punish her later. But Mike was back on the subject of love.
"I really do,
cjuerida.
I love you more and more. I don't know what I'd do if someone shot you on our wedding day."
"No one's going to shoot me, wedding day or any other time," April said, uneasy about making a promise no one could keep.
Skinny Dragon believed people owned each other. The dragon believed that because she'd given birth to April, she owned her daughter for life. But people didn't own each other. Tilings happened, they fell in love with the wrong people, got hurt, got sick, died. Shooting wasn't the only bad thing that happened.
"Yo rezo,"
he said curtly, as if reading her mind.
Well, she prayed also, just to different gods. His sudden Spanish made the point that in the Bronx he was home. And at home there were certain things you just didn't do in English. Praying and loving were two. April knew how it was. At her home the thing you didn't do was feel anything but guilt. Guilt was the operative feeling. You had to make money and save face, that was it.
Face
translated into Spanish as
macho,
and
macho
translated into English as
honor.
As far as April was concerned all of it made trouble.
"Next time, don't go to autopsies of brides in the middle of the night. Makes you morbid." She ended the conversation. He was tough, but it had gotten to him, no question about it.
Independence Avenue was only six blocks long, from 239th to 247th streets. It ran parallel to the Henry Hudson Parkway and the Hudson River, located halfway between the HH Parkway and the Palisades. Lining the parkway like soldiers in a parade were miles of luxury apartment buildings. Behind them was the old Riverdale, practically untouched. A real suburb only a few minutes from Manhattan, this area had narrow, hilly roads and gracious brick Tudor and stucco Mediterranean-style houses, overarched by the branches of venerable trees. Around them, landscaped yards with walks and arbors were studded with flowering shrubs and brilliantly hued spring flowers. The houses on the Hudson had the bonus of a majestic view of the mighty river and the green palisades of New Jersey.