by Julia Dahl
“Did you ever actually meet her?”
“Yes. We met at the house in Coney Island, the same one your mother used to go to. I wanted to thank her and she suggested that would be a good place to talk.”
“Did you know she had been going there?”
“No,” says Saul. I’m expecting him to explain further, but he does not.
“What about Miriam?” I ask.
“What about her?”
“How do you know her?”
Saul shifts in his seat. Why is this making him so uncomfortable?
“Before Rivka and I met, I made the mistake of going to the Mendelssohn home, uninvited, to express my gratitude. Rivka was not home, but Miriam was. She said Aron did not agree with Rivka’s position regarding my son, and that I was not welcome inside.”
“Really?”
“She told me she didn’t believe it was appropriate for Rivka to speak publicly about my son, either.”
“But she let you in last night.”
Saul nods. “Last night, well, things had changed.” He pauses. “When I saw you at the Mendelssohn house yesterday, Rebekah, I saw an opportunity.”
“An opportunity for what?”
“An opportunity to keep this case alive.”
“How is it not alive? It’s barely been twenty-four hours.”
“Yes,” says Saul. “And the victim’s body is gone.” Right.
“Do you know how many of the murders in this city get solved, Rebekah?”
“No.”
“A little more than half.”
“Half?”
“Sixty-one percent last year. But it’s lower in Brooklyn. Nationally, about four out of every ten murder victims never get justice. Every day, I go to people’s homes and businesses who have been robbed. I will work ten hours a day, six days a week, and I will make an arrest for only four of every ten cases. Car theft is worse.” He pauses. “I am surprised you don’t know this. Your newspaper made a big splash of it last year. I believe the headline was ‘New Yorkers Get Away with Murder.’”
“I guess I just don’t know what you want,” I say quietly.
“I want you to write articles about Rivka Mendelssohn’s murder. I want you to keep the pressure on the police and the community.”
“And you can’t do that? Why aren’t you like, bringing a colleague to see her body?”
Saul shakes his head. “You talked to Miriam. You talked to Chaya. I guarantee you that Chaya would not have let me—or any other police officer—into her house, or given us that letter.”
“But you’re the police.”
“And?”
“This is what you do.”
“I’m telling you that you can do it better than I can.”
“So you want to use me.”
“Yes,” he says slowly. “That is one way to put it. I want you to stay on this story. I want you to do your job as a journalist and try to find out the truth. Do we not, in some respects, have the same goals here? We both seek the truth.” Before I can say anything, he says, “I know it’s not that simple. I know what I am asking.”
“I don’t think you do, Saul,” I say. “You’re asking me to start lying.”
“I am not.”
“You are. I can’t tell my editors I spent the afternoon posing as a college student to view a murder victim’s body in the basement of a funeral home with a detective from the fucking robbery squad.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t!” But the moment I say it, I know I can. I can, but it didn’t occur to me, because, up until now, I’ve never taken any real initiative on any story at the Trib. I’ve done what they’ve told me—nothing less, and nothing more. I’ve snuck past doormen to get quotes from tenants in fancy buildings and posed as a customer while stalking some celebrity in a grocery store. I’ve pretended I was considering enrolling in a city college so I could get a look inside the admissions office a whistleblower claimed was rife with sexual harassment. I’ve taken chances and pushed limits, but never of my own volition. I can blame it on the fact that the system of the paper is set up to keep me moving, keep my attention focused on something different every day, but that’s bullshit. They haven’t tried to control my curiosity; they just haven’t punished me for not engaging it.
“I would think your editors might be rather impressed by what you accomplished today. You found a source inside the investigation who gave you exclusive information about the case.”
“Except you’re not exactly inside the investigation, Saul,” I say.
“You let me worry about that.”
“Okay,” I say, “but if you knew Rivka Mendelssohn, I need to know that.”
“I did not know her well. I knew she was questioning because I knew she had been to the Coney Island house. I am not involved in the group that runs the house anymore, but I am in contact with those who are. I also know Aron Mendelssohn. Or rather, I know the reach of his influence.”
“His influence?”
“He is perhaps the single largest donor to Shomrim, the neighborhood watch group that functions as a kind of quasi-police force. You saw them at the Mendelssohn house. Five years ago, the group was a handful of middle-aged men with cell phones. Now, they have a command center, half a dozen fully equipped former police vehicles, and probably a hundred volunteers.”
“What do they do, exactly?”
“They call themselves the eyes and ears of the community. They search for lost seniors and children. You might have seen them driving around. Their cars have an official-looking insignia painted on them. It’s designed to look very much like the NYPD’s.”
“So they’re, like, security guards. Pretend police.”
This amuses Saul. “Pretend police. Well, some families teach their children to call the Shomrim 800-number before calling 911, if they suspect a break-in. The group encourages that.”
“Are they armed?”
“No.”
“Are they trained?”
Saul shrugs. “By each other. When there is a problem, something stolen, violence, the community would rather talk to another Jew about it.”
“But isn’t that what you’re for?”
“Yes,” he says. “But they have to trust the police enough to call first.”
“And they don’t trust the police?”
“It’s not that, exactly,” he says.
“It’s mesirah.” It’s the first time I’ve ever used a Yiddish word in a sentence. It comes out easily.
“Exactly. If they have something bad to say about a Jew, they’d rather say it to another Jew.”
“And Aron Mendelssohn is a benefactor to them?”
“Yes. The benefactor. For the Borough Park group.”
“And you think he could make a murder go away?”
“Well, he already has.”
“Has he?”
“Did you see any NYPD at the funeral today? Or at the house?” Saul’s voice is getting hoarse. He’s got an extra layer pulling at his face and his middle, but in his youth, I’d guess Saul was definitely attractive. He has a strong brow and hazel eyes, and he carries himself with a kind of jittery but confidence-inducing pride. I wonder what my mother thought of him. I wonder what he really thought—thinks—of her.
“You’ve talked to three people who knew her. None of them have been questioned by police and all of them suggested that Rivka and her husband were having problems. But Aron Mendelssohn has not been brought in.”
The employees at the Starbucks are mopping the floor. They’ve set chairs on tables and turned up the music. It is time to go.
“Would you like a ride somewhere?” he asks.
“Home,” I say. “I’d like a ride home.”
We cross the street and get into his car in silence. Fifteen minutes later, when Saul pulls up to my building, I take off my seat belt and turn to face him. His yarmulke is made of a thick material that looks more expensive than the sateen loaners they gave men in temple in Orlando. Dad c
ame with me and Anya’s family once to Rosh Hashanah services. I snickered at him when he unfolded the “beanie” and placed it so reverently on his head. You know you don’t have to wear one if you’re not Jewish, I said, like he didn’t know. Saul’s is black, and he has it secured to what’s left of his hair with two bobby pins.
“You’ll think about what I said?” he asks.
Which part? I think. The part where there’s a dead woman no one cares about except for the two of us? The part where there are two police departments? Or the part where I’m 100 percent in over my fucking head?
I get out of the car without answering.
“Rebekah,” he says, “I think your mother would be very proud of you.”
Fantastic, I think, as I slam the door shut. Just what I need.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Within ten minutes of walking in the door. I am asleep in my clothes. I wake up sweating at midnight. I turn my face toward the window and look at the street. We face west. It occurs to me that if there were no obstructions, no brick warehouses or apartment buildings or train tracks, I’d be able to see the scrap yard from my bed. The scrap yard that has become the center of my life.
At 2 A.M. I wake up again and see light beneath my bedroom door. I roll out of bed and squint down the hall and into the living room. Iris is on the couch watching Days of Our Lives, which she records every day and watches on the weekends. There is a pizza box on the coffee table. I open the box and pick up two slices, then carry them to the microwave on the counter.
“How was your day?” I ask.
“I slept mostly,” she says. “Then had dinner with one of the girls from work. How was your day?”
“Saul took me to see her body.” Iris doesn’t say much as I tell her, in disjointedly chronological order, about the funeral and Malka and the pregnant girl with the note, and Yakov and Miriam and Shomrim. She sits cross-legged, looking at me the whole time, her face twisting into an evolving series of what the fuck expressions. I do fine recounting everything until I get to Rivka’s body, which I leave for last.
“It looked like she’d been attacked by animals,” I say, suddenly out of breath. My chest feels like someone is sitting on it. “I guess, where the pieces of scrap got her.”
“I can’t believe you saw a dead body today.”
I shake my head and inhale deeply. Twice. A third time. Iris hands me the glass of water she’s been drinking from. I drink. This feels different than the kind of panics I get that make my stomach hurt. This comes from my lungs and my throat, not my intestines. It’s hard to breathe.
“You want a pill?” asks Iris.
I nod. Iris goes into my room and brings back the bottle of lorazepam. She fills a glass of water at the sink, shakes out a little white pill, and hands it to me. I drink. When I first consented to be prescribed anxiety meds I noticed that the moment I took a pill I felt a little calmer. My doctor had said that even knowing I had them around if I needed them might help, and she was right.
“So what did he say about your mom?”
“He said her family moved upstate about twenty years ago.”
“Wow,” whispers Iris. “That’s close.”
“I know.” Iris was pretty crushed after her mom died, and we spent a lot of time crying and talking, mostly while intoxicated, about how helpless we felt, and how screwed up adults were and how we were gonna make our lives better. One of those nights we floated the idea of New York. Back then, I was battling urges to go find my mom. I’m an adult now, I thought. I could. Sophomore year, I considered doing a spring-break-long pilgrimage to Brooklyn as the final project for my creative nonfiction seminar. But I chickened out when I realized I’d have to explain what I was doing to my dad, and didn’t think I could bear the conversation. Eventually that lack of action hardened into a decision against action. New York, however, remained. I remember telling Iris, as the fantasy became a plan, that being in New York put me in a position where she could find me.
“Did he say anything else?”
“He said she went to Israel for a few years after she left us. He seemed to think she was sort of sent there,” I say, realizing I haven’t really thought about his story. “He said he’d heard rumors that she, like, had substance issues, but he thought maybe she was mentally unstable. Like, possibly depressed. And obviously getting no treatment.”
“Maybe she had anxiety, too,” says Iris.
Somehow, it had never occurred to me that her erratic behavior—leaving one life, then leaving another—might have been caused by chemicals misfiring in her brain. Getting help when anxiety started to turn me into a different person was just a matter of walking to student health services. Not so easy in her world.
“Maybe she was just a runner,” I say. “Things get bad, you leave. Saul said he thought she was weak. He also said he thinks I’m smarter than she was. And that she’d be proud of me.”
“That must be weird.”
I love Iris. She may be into makeup and lotions, but when you talk to her, she focuses on the details that matter, and she’s quick to put herself in your shoes. I make an ugly face indicating that, yes, it is indeed very weird to suddenly have a direct line to my mom.
“It sounds like he knew her pretty well,” she says.
“I know. But when we were talking about it, he was pretty vague.”
Iris nods.
“So, I need to figure out what to do here,” I say.
“Do you think you could really help?”
“I don’t know. I mean, Saul clearly thinks so.”
“But who is Saul, exactly?”
“My dad knew him. A little. He seems to vouch for him.”
“Do you trust him?”
“I think so.”
“You have pretty good instincts about people,” says Iris. “But what about the Trib?”
“Another problem.”
“Do you think they’re gonna drop the story?”
“Well, we’ll see what tomorrow’s issue looks like. Today’s story was, like, four inches, and the best part—that she was found naked and bald in a scrap heap—has already happened. So unless something major breaks, yeah, they’ll drop the story.”
“The best part?” Iris is challenging my crassness. She thinks it’s my way of detaching from uncomfortable situations, and she’s probably right.
“From their perspective,” I say. “I guess I need to talk to Saul again. I don’t even really know what he wants me to do, specifically.”
“It sounds like he wants you to fight for the story,” says Iris. “Stay on it. Tell the paper to stay on it.”
“Right,” I say. It sounds so simple. “But you know I don’t have any control. I could write a story every day and they might never publish it.”
“They’ll publish it if it’s good.”
“Define good.”
“If it’s got new information in it. Inside information. Information the Ledger and the Times don’t have.”
“So I’ve gone from zero to Bob Woodward in twenty-four hours?”
“Pretty much,” says Iris, grabbing a slice of pizza.
I don’t want to tell her that I’m having a hard time picturing myself being able to pull this off. I don’t even really know who makes what decisions at the Trib. If the paper has a policy on anonymous sources, I don’t know what it is. I was more involved in getting the newspaper put together every day as a summer intern at the Orlando Sentinel than I am now, after more than half a year working full-time for the Trib. The newsroom buried in the middle floors of that black Midtown high-rise is a machine I don’t understand. It’s kind of appalling how incurious I’ve been.
“Here’s what I think,” says Iris. “Do you want to know what I think?”
I nod.
“Okay.” She crosses her legs. “I think there are several things going on here. First, I know this is all very fucked up, but since you started working at the Trib you haven’t talked about a single story like you cared about it. You’re
not writing at all.” She pauses and puts her hand up defensively. “I’m not saying it’s your fault. I get that they have people on rewrite. I’m just saying that if you took the initiative and got a source and reported out a story no one was telling, and then wrote it, it seems unlikely they wouldn’t publish it, seeing as your name already appears in the paper as if you’re writing regularly. And that would be good for you, as a young journalist.”
“I know,” I say.
“I don’t do work like you. I wouldn’t have the first clue what to do if a cop told me he suspected a murder was going to go cold, other than say, ‘bummer.’”
I roll my eyes—she’s exaggerating.
“I choose to work with products. When I get to write, I write about inanimate objects. But you write about people. People with lives way beyond what you see and what they tell you. I get that that’s what makes them interesting to you. I totally get that. But you’ve got a whole bunch of loyalties going on here. You’ve got the paper and the people you quote and Saul and the dead woman. And you’re the only thing connecting all of them. If it weren’t for you, they wouldn’t come together. So if shit goes wrong—if you write something somebody doesn’t like, or write something that isn’t true—you’re on the hook. And my guess is that none of these people, except maybe Saul, but who the fuck really knows what his deal is, will have your back.”
I’m not sure what to say. She’s right. This is what I signed up for. This is what being a journalist is: sorting through conflicting information and finding the truth and setting it free. Putting yourself on the line with every word, pissing people off and maybe even fucking with their lives in the name of the truth. In college they talked about journalism as being like sunlight, shining light into darkness; revealing. Sunlight, they said, is the best disinfectant. And it sounded exactly right. It sounded like something I wanted to build my life on. I know a lot of places in the world that could use some sunlight; one of them is Borough Park.
“I don’t think I want to talk about this anymore,” I say.
“Fair enough,” says Iris. “Wanna watch a movie?”
“I think I’m going to go back to bed.”