Mike sits. Larry hesitates, gesturing to me. I appreciate the courtesy but nod for him to sit. I need to stay standing; I think it will make me seem more in control.
“Sir,” I say, before he’s even got his coat off, “let me tell you what happened.”
“Wonderful! Someone who gets to the point. Go.”
I take a deep breath; I’ve been practicing a succinct version of the last three days on the train. The quicker I get it out, the quicker I know if I still have a job. And, if I’m lucky, the quicker the brick in my stomach begins to dissolve.
“Mike sent me to a crime scene on Friday. A dead body in a scrap metal yard in Brooklyn. I talked to DCPI and workers and even to the victim’s son-though I didn’t know he was her son at the time. Later that night, Cathy had me go to the victim’s house in Borough Park. There were several police cars out front, including the Shomrim.”
Albert has thrown his coat over the back of his enormous leather chair. He is standing with his arms crossed over his chest, his face expressionless. I wait for him to ask me what the Shomrim is, but he does not. “Keep going,” he says.
“One of the cars had uniformed officers in it, one had plainclothes. They were detectives. I asked them about the case but they wouldn’t talk to me.”
Larry sits down. We make eye contact and he nods, like, you’re doing okay. Mike is biting at his cuticles and looking at the carpet. I continue.
“Then another detective arrived. He had a badge. At least it looked like a badge. And he went directly to the uniformed officers and spoke with them. And they spoke with him. So I assumed he was a detective. I went to question him and… he recognized me.”
“Excuse me?” Morgan’s tone is teetering on exasperation.
“He knew my mother. I look like her.”
“Get to the part where you explain quickly, please.”
“He said he was in property crimes but that because he was Orthodox and had grown up in the community he was sometimes called in as a liaison. The problem is that he wasn’t actually working the case at all, because he’d been suspended from the force in December for… assaulting a man.”
Mike shakes his head. “Jesus.”
“But everything he told me has been right on,” I say. “Are the police actually denying she was pregnant?”
“No,” says Larry. “In fact, I’ve been told off the record that it’s true.”
“Off the record?” asks Morgan.
“Brooklyn South commander gave it to me an hour ago.”
Morgan turns to me. “What else did this… What’s his name?”
“Saul Katz.”
“What else did Saul Katz tell you?”
“He told me he didn’t think the police were going to do a real investigation.”
“What made him think this?”
“He said the community was obsessed with keeping unpleasant things under wraps. He said there was a kind of don’t-ask-don’t-tell thing going on between them and the police. He said Aron Mendelssohn, the dead woman’s husband, was a major benefactor of Shomrim and that he would make sure they pinned this on someone outside the community, or just let people forget about it.”
“Didn’t they bring in a gardener?” Morgan asks.
“They questioned a gardener and released him,” I say.
“No arrests?”
“No,” I say. “And at the scene the M.E.’s office let the Jewish van take the body straight to the funeral home.”
“Larry, there was no autopsy?”
Larry shakes his head. “The funeral home might make a report.”
“Has anyone seen a report?” asks Morgan.
“I’ve seen the body,” I say.
Everyone looks at me.
“You mean at the crime scene,” says Mike.
“No,” I say, “I got into the funeral home on Saturday. I saw her after they’d… prepared her.”
“Let me guess,” says Larry, “Saul Katz got you in.”
I nod again. Larry looks impressed. Mike looks annoyed. Morgan is still wearing a poker face.
“She was savagely beaten,” I say, trying to impart the graveness of her injuries with my inflection. “Someone hit her in the face and the head and the neck repeatedly with something. They shaved her head and stripped her and dumped her in the scrap pile. She’d be on her way to China if not for dumb luck.”
“Okay,” says Morgan. “Ms…?”
“Roberts. Rebekah Roberts.”
“Ms. Roberts. You’ve obviously done some good work on this. You’ve also made some pretty major fucking mistakes. Are you a New Yorker?”
“No,” I say. “I’m from Florida.”
“Well, if you were a New Yorker, you might know that the Orthodox community does, in fact, have some clout with the department and the city. That’s not a story.”
“Exactly,” says Mike.
“But,” he says, leaning forward on his desk, “a rogue NYPD detective and the slow-footing of the investigation into the brutal murder of a pregnant woman because the department doesn’t want to upset a population of voters is.”
“I agree,” says Larry. “And the investigation isn’t following normal avenues. It’s been three days and they haven’t questioned the husband. He owns the yard where she was dumped. He’s at least worth questioning to figure out who has access.”
“They also don’t know about the victim’s boyfriend,” I say. “And we do.”
Morgan raises his eyebrows; I’ve impressed him.
“What about this Saul Katz character?” asks Morgan. “Is he a suspect?”
Larry’s phone rings. He answers quietly.
“They’re sort of acting like he might be, but I think they’re just pissed he’s talking to the press.”
Morgan considers this.
I am not dressed to meet the boss. My dirty hair is twisted up in a plastic clip and I’m a month overdue for a lip and eyebrow wax. Albert Morgan is in a hand-cut navy suit. Cuff links on Monday night. I must look like a child: no makeup, chipped purple nail polish, old red Doc Martens on my feet.
“Ms. Roberts,” he says. “What are you hoping will happen after we leave this meeting?”
“Well,” I say, “I’m hoping you don’t fire me.”
“Go on.”
“I know I’ve fucked up the sourcing, but I’ve got a ton of information on Rivka Mendelssohn. She had a daughter who died about a year ago. And she was considering a divorce. She had looked at apartments with her boyfriend. And her husband had threatened her recently.”
“This is on the record?”
“Yes.”
“From Saul Katz?” asks Mike. Why is he being such a dick?
“No,” I say. “From a social worker who knew her. And two girls-young women-who were friends with her. They’re all part of this group of ultra-Orthodox who are, like, questioning. On the margins. I have a picture, too.”
I take the snapshot out of my pocket. I hadn’t even looked at which one I’d gotten. It’s the one of her in the wedding dress. I hand it to Morgan.
He looks at the photo and nods.
“Write that up for tomorrow,” says Morgan, handing the photo to Mike. “Friends talk about her, say she was rebelling, the boyfriend, the dead child, whatever you have. But we can only milk the victim for a day. There are about five hundred murders in the city every year. This is a corruption story. We need to connect the husband to the Jewish patrol. I have a very angry commissioner on my ass, but from what I can tell, it’s his people he should be angry at, not mine. You let a source use you. Don’t do it again.”
“I won’t,” I say.
“Background your sources. Ask the library.”
“I will,” I say.
Larry gets off his call. “That was my source in Brooklyn homicide. They just arrested Saul Katz.”
“For what?” I ask.
“Impersonating a police officer and obstruction,” says Larry. “They say they’re looking at him for the murder.”
“On the record?” says Morgan.
Larry nods. “They called him a ‘person of interest.’”
Morgan rubs his hand over his mouth. “Okay,” he says. “We need two stories. Larry, you write up the arrest. I don’t want Rebekah near that. She’s compromised. I don’t think you need to get too detailed about his relationship with the paper. Maybe just that Katz had been speaking to a Trib reporter about the case. Rebekah, we’ll have to name you.”