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“Why are the boys upset?” she asked.
“It’s complicated. But everyone’s fine.”
“Okay,” she said. “Relax. I’ll make coffee and then you can tell me what’s going on.”
Her house was tiny—800 square feet crammed with mementos—tchatchkas, she called them. Display cases full of Jewish figurines, propped photos, and sketches of Israel. The white walls were dotted with landscapes of the Judean dessert, charcoals of the Old City of Jerusalem and the Wailing Wall, and photos of the Lower East Side of New York. Hanging above the sofa was a magnificently colored and elaborately scrolled Hebrew document—her wedding contract, her ketubah.
That’s what a Jewish marriage is, she had said. A contract. You’re supposed to know what you’re getting yourself into.
But do you ever really know, he had wondered out loud.
Emotionally, of course not. But a ketubah spells out the specific obligations for a husband as well as a wife. You’ve got to remember that back then, most societies considered women things—objects. The idea that a man was accountable to his wife was revolutionary.
Her entire east wall was the family gallery—snapshots of her parents, and her brothers and their families, pictures of her sons as infants and toddlers clumsy in bulky diapers, and antique sepia portraits of her grandparents and great-grandparents in gilt frames. And the wedding pictures—Rina and Yitzchak under a canopy holding a shared wine glass. The groom was looking directly at the rabbi, his eyes intense and serious. He’d been a handsome young man, Decker thought, lean, with even, strong features. But Rina was the focus of the photograph—a stunningly beautiful girl with sapphire eyes and gleaming ebony hair that fell to her waist. She was dazzling as a bride. Whenever he looked at the picture, he felt a twinge in his chest.
His eyes drifted from the photo to the overflowing bookcases. She owned some secular books, but most were religious—Hebrew and Aramaic books of prayer, law, and ethics that were double and triple stacked on the shelves. She had skimmed through some of them, she had told him, but Yitzchak had known them all by heart.
Rina came back with black coffee for him and a milk-laced cup for herself. She sat down, tucked her legs under her denim skirt, and brushed midnight silk out of her eyes.
“Now,” she said. “What happened?”
“Everything’s okay,” he started out. “Sammy went exploring in the woods and came across a couple of human skeletons—”
“What?”
“It scared him, of course. It scared Jake, also, but they’re okay,” he said.
“What’d they do?”
“They asked a lot of good questions and I answered them. Kids do well with the honest approach.”
“Was it disgusting?”
“It was graphic.”
“What’d they ask you, Peter?”
“They acted pretty characteristically. Jake seemed more interested in the bones per se. How did they get there? Did the bad man who dumped them still live in the city? Is he going to kill us—”
“Dear God, I’d better talk to him—”
Decker held up the palm of his hand and continued.
“He watched the police procedures, and it was good for him. Gave him a sense of resolution. He’s not the one who took it to heart.”
“What’d Sammy say?”
“Sammy had a more adult concept about the whole thing. He talked about death—how the rabbis approached it. I think it was a speech he’d heard in the past. It may have brought back some painful memories.”
“Did he mention Yitzchak?”
“Not by name. He did tell me that Jews aren’t buried in airtight coffins—that their bones disintegrate into dust. Reading between the lines, you could tell what he was thinking.”
The room was silent for a moment.
“I’ll see how they’re doing,” she said quietly.
Decker nodded. She left the room and he slowly sipped his coffee.
It had been six months since he’d first stepped onto the grounds of the yeshiva, entering an alien world governed by laws codified thirteen hundred years ago. He’d been the detective assigned to a brutal rape that had occured outside the mikvah—the ritual bathhouse—and Rina had been a witness. As the investigation unfolded, it became clear that she’d been the intended victim all along. By the time the perpetrator was caught, their lives had become permanently enmeshed.
And now was the endless period of waiting. Long hours of studying that he hoped would lead to commitment. But often he wondered if this was what he really wanted. If Rina had never entered his life, he wouldn’t have changed. But she had, and he felt as if he were trapped between floors in a stuck elevator. His past seemed remote, his future uncertain. Some people found uncertainty exciting. He considered it a giant headache.
He closed his eyes, attempting to rest, and opened them only when he heard Rina reenter the room.
“They seem all right,” she said. “Jakey recounted everything in gory detail. He said the bodies had been burned.”
She looked at him for confirmation and he nodded.
“That’s repulsive,” she said shuddering. “He also said you were assigned to the case.”
“It’s called being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Can’t get away from work, huh?”
“Ain’t that the truth,” said Decker. “How’s Sammy doing?”
“Quiet. He’s reading a book that Yitzy used to read to him. He hadn’t looked at it in years, and now it’s way too easy for him. You were right about reading between the lines.”
“He talked a lot about his father before he found the skeletons.”
Rina was taken aback.
“He did?”
“Yes. The kid has a good memory. He told me how Yitzchak used to take him to class and he’d sit on all the rabbis’ laps, about how he and his father learned together.”
Her eyes misted. “What else did he say?”
“He became very emotional when he described Yitzchak’s possessions—”
“What possessions?”
It had never dawned on Decker that Sammy hadn’t told his mother all of this. Suddenly, he realized that he was breaking confidences.
“Uh,” he stalled. “He has his father’s siddur, his tallis, things like that.”
Tears streamed down her cheek. She walked over to the window and stared outward.
“The day before Yitzchak’s burial,” she whispered, “I turned this house inside out looking for that tallis. I wanted him to be buried in it.” She shook her head. “And all this time, Sammy had it … I’m glad he does. In retrospect, it would have been stupid to bury a treasure like that. Yitzy must have known.”
Decker walked up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. She turned to face him.
“Sammy doesn’t talk to me about his father. Not that I haven’t tried, but he refuses to open up. Maybe I get too emotional myself. But I’m glad he talked to you.” She laughed tearfully. “You’re a good guy, Peter. I’m sure you explained the corpses a lot better than I could have.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” he said. “Let’s just say I’m used to talking about things like that.”
She gave his hand a gentle squeeze, then pulled away.
“I was talking to Rav Schulman yesterday,” she said.
“How’s he doing?”
“Fine. He’s impressed with you. He’s says you’re very sharp, that you possess a natural Talmudic mind.”
Decker smiled.
“That’s good to know because I sure feel like a slug sometimes, especially with the language.”
“It will come, sweetie.”
“Maybe. I’m too old for this, Rina.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “Rabbi Akiva was forty when he started learning Torah. You’ve got a good year’s jump on him.”
“And look where it got him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Wasn’t he one of the ten rabbis who was tortured by the Romans? The one who had his back raked open by hot iron combs?”
Rina looked at him.
“All I meant to say was that coming to religion later in life isn’t necessarily a handicap,” she said. “Rabbi Akiva went on to be one of the greatest sages of all time, and he was a total ignoramus when he started learning. I certainly wasn’t thinking about how he died.”
Decker took her hand and kissed it. “I know you meant it as encouragement,” he said. “It was a morbid association.”
“I guess it was in line with your day,” she sympathized.
“Yeah,” he said. “It goes with the territory. Cops just seem to fixate on death.”
3
The dental offices of Hennon and MacGrady were on Roxbury Drive, north of Wilshire, in Beverly Hills. Decker pulled his unmarked ’79 Plymouth into a loading zone—the only free space he could find—and placed his police identification card on the front dash. It was late in the afternoon, almost dusk, and he was tired from battling city traffic. If the meeting with the forensic odontologist wasn’t unduly long, he’d make it home before eight.
He entered the waiting room, and immediately his nostrils were assaulted by pungent, antiseptic smells that plunged him into Pavlovian anxiety. The office decor did little to comfort him. The furniture was black and gray, the table, glass and chrome, and the eggshell walls were covered by monochrome graphic art—repetitive figure-ground designs, like a black-and-white TV test pattern. It made him dizzy and hostile.
A hell of an unfriendly way to furnish a dental office.
He walked up to a glass window and knocked on the frosted pane. The window slid open, and the receptionist, a blonde girl no more than eighteen, gave him a practiced smile.
“Can I help you?” she beeped.
“I have a five o’clock appointment with Dr. Hennon.”
“Name?”
“Decker,” he said.
She scanned the appointment book.
“Yes, you do,” she confirmed. “Is this your first time here, Mr. Decker?”
“I’m not a patient.”
The girl was thrown off balance.
“Oh,” she said, then brightened. “You’re the salesman from Dent-O-Mart, right?”
“No, I’m a police sergeant.”
She frowned. “Is anything wrong?”
“Why don’t you tell Dr. Hennon I’m here and you can call me when she’s ready to see me?”
She was still puzzled.
“She’s with a patient.”
“Just poke your head in, huh?”
The girl got up reluctantly and came back a moment later.
“She’ll see you in a minute, Sergeant,” she announced, relieved.
“Thank you.”
She slid back the partition and it slammed shut. End of conversation.
Decker sat down on an unyielding ebony cushion and squirmed uncomfortably. Sorting through the magazines on the table, he settled on Architectural Digest, skimming through pages of mansions he’d never be able to afford. He heard a door open, and glanced upward to see a woman at the reception desk. She had to be at least his age, he thought, maybe even a couple of years older, which would put her around forty-one or -two. Her face wasn’t anything to write home about, but her figure was tight—a good bust and a dynamite ass neatly packaged in designer jeans. She knocked loudly on the receptionist’s window, turned around, and flashed him a mouth full of ivories.
“Nice smile,” Decker said, returning her grin.
“It should be,” she said. “It cost me five g’s.”
“Well, you got your money’s worth.” He realized he was coming on to her inadvertently and returned his eyes to the magazine. But he could feel the heat of her gaze.
“What are you in here for?” she asked, pulling out a gold credit card.
