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 about 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 week-end. 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.”