“They had a fight about the roller coaster? Or Coney Island?”
“I don’t know. He said…” And then it hits me: Coney Island is where the safe house my mom and Saul used to go to was. Could it still be there? “Saul,” I say slowly. “How did you know Rivka Mendelssohn?”
Saul looks at his hands.
“Saul,” I ask again, my voice louder this time. “How did you know her?”
“Calm down,” whispers Saul. “Rivka Mendelssohn knew my son.”
“Your son?” What had my dad said about Saul’s son? That they were estranged after his divorce.
Saul nods. “He was an instructor at Yakov’s yeshiva.”
“Oh,” I say. “What does he teach?”
“He taught math,” says Saul. “But he was let go. Rivka Mendelssohn was one of the only parents who took his side.”
“His side?”
“She asked the rebbe to let him stay.”
“Did he?”
Saul shakes his head.
“What happened?”
Saul draws and exhales a sharp breath. He seems impatient. I don’t think he’s going to tell me any more. “That is not really important. What is important is that she helped someone I love at a time he needed help. And I want to help her.”
“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?”