Yom Kippur Murder (3 page)

“Thank you.” As I left the study, Sergeant Franciotti was looking at the names in his notebook.

I didn’t volunteer because I’m good at this sort of thing or because I like to do it. It just seemed I’d be a better bearer of bad news than a policeman who complained about people dying on high floors.

In the kitchen I dialed the number for Nina Passman. It rang and rang, reminding me again that this was Yom Kippur, and Nina and her family were probably in synagogue. I tried the Atlanta number, but there, too, no one answered. As I left the kitchen, I could hear several people talking in the living room, but I kept away. I had no stomach for the scene.

I went back to the study and told the detective that the Herskovitz children were unavailable, and the probable reason. He said his people would keep trying and that I was free to go.

“Is Mrs. Paterno still here?” I asked.

“She left. So did Gallagher.”

“She’s very frightened about staying in the building now.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll have the boys drive around the block here for a while, keep their eyes open. Be pretty safe.”

I wondered. “Good-bye,” I said.

“Nice meeting you.”

I went up one flight to Mrs. Paterno ’s apartment and rang the bell. There was no answer. I knocked and called, but there was no sound from inside. I wasn’t afraid she had met with foul play—the police were a noticeable presence inside and out—but I wondered where she had gone and whether she had a place to stay for the night.

Downstairs I found Mr. Gallagher. He was dressed in worn corduroy pants and a heavy sweater that seemed to top off every outfit. His face was pale, and there was an air of frailty about him that I had never seen before.

“Come and have lunch with me,” I said.

“Good idea. Seems safe enough with all the coppers.”

“Mrs. Paterno doesn’t answer her bell.”

“Probably wants to be alone, poor thing.”

“I’ll check on her later.”

We had lunch on Broadway, my treat, and then I walked him home. Then I drove crosstown to where an old friend of mine from St. Stephen’s had a small apartment.

Sister Celia Rataczak was spending the academic year enrolled in a nursing program at one of the hospitals on New York’s East Side. Since St. Stephen’s is some distance up the Hudson, she had sublet a tiny, beautifully furnished apartment on First Avenue, which had a sleep sofa in the main living area as well as a bed in a little alcove. We’d known each other for a long time, and I was delighted to have the chance to stay overnight with her after my date this evening.

After I had explained what had happened that morning, I put on a big flannel shirt I had brought along to relax in and hung up my suit jacket and skirt. Celia was wearing the obligatory brown habit of the Order of St. Francis I had once belonged to.

About half an hour after I got there, I finally found someone home at the Passmans’.

When Mrs. Passman came to the phone, I said, “My name is Christine Bennett. I’ve been helping your father lately, and I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

“About my father?” the woman said, and something in her voice made it sound as though there were something preposterous in that.

“Nathan Herskovitz,” I said. “I’m afraid he’s dead.”

There was a silence, and I wished I could touch her, give her support at this terrible moment.

“I think you’ve made a mistake,” the woman said. “My father died twenty years ago.”

It took me a moment to recover. I had dialed the right number. She had responded to the name Passman. Had Gallagher
gotten things mixed up? The envelope had said only Mrs. Gordon Passman. Nothing really identified her as Nina Herskovitz.

“Are you Nina Herskovitz?” I asked.

“I’m sorry. I think you’ve got the wrong number.” She hung up, and I did the same.

“Trouble?” Celia asked.

“I feel like an idiot. I’ve just called some poor woman and told her her father’s dead when her father died twenty years ago. Well, I suppose the police will find the right one. Should I try the son or quit while I’m behind?”

“Give it a try.”

I dialed the Georgia number, and a teenage girl answered. I asked for Mr. Herskovitz, and a man said “Hello?” in a voice that sounded almost like Nathan’s.

I said it all again and waited.

“He’s dead?” the man said. “My father is dead?”

“I’m sorry, yes.”

“What hospital are you calling from?”

“I’m not calling from a hospital, Mr. Herskovitz. I’ve been working with the tenants in his building, and I went down this morning to take your father to synagogue—”

“My father? He was going to temple?”

“He wanted very much to go for the holy day, but he needed a little help walking there.” I was starting to wish I had left this for the police.

“My father was going to temple for Yom Kippur?” He sounded more incredulous about that than about his father being dead.

“That’s right,” I said.

“Excuse me, I didn’t get your name.”

I gave it to him and explained again what my relationship was to his father and the other tenants. Then he asked me how his father had died.

“It appears to be murder, Mr. Herskovitz.”

“Murder. Jesus. My father was murdered?”

“I’m afraid so. The police will be calling you, but I wanted
to tell you myself because I was very fond of your father. He was a decent, thoughtful man, and I’m very sorry.”

There was a short silence. Then, “Right, right. He was.”

“Mr. Herskovitz, I called a Mrs. Gordon Passman, who I thought was your sister, to tell her what had happened, but I seem to have reached the wrong number or person.” I gave him the number I had called.

“Yeah, that’s Nina’s number.” He read it back to me.

“She told me her father had died twenty years ago. I really don’t understand how—”

“Yeah, well, if you knew Pop and you knew Nina, you’d understand.”

“I see. Will you be coming to New York, Mr. Herskovitz?”

“I guess I’ll have to. I suppose there are arrangements …”

“I’d be glad to help in any way I can.” I gave him my phone number and address. “I really mean that, anything at all.”

He asked for the name of someone at the police station whom he could call. I gave him Franciotti’s name, but I couldn’t think of the precinct number. He said not to worry, and I gave him another few words of condolence, and we hung up.

With that behind me, I settled in for a nice talk with Celia.

My date that evening was Mark Brownstein, a first cousin of my neighbor in Oakwood, Melanie Gross. Melanie and I had become friends after I moved into the house I inherited from my aunt Meg, who had lived there about as long as I can remember. Mel had told me that Mark “did something on Wall Street” and was rich and great and good-looking and single. Frankly, I thought it very decent of him to gamble an evening on someone he didn’t know, someone who had been a nun for half her life. I assumed Mel had said nice things about me, but even so, I liked his style.

We were meeting rather late, nine-thirty, but as he had explained on the phone, it was Yom Kippur, and he would break his fast with his parents earlier in the evening. (Yom
Kippur, I knew, was a fast day). He also thought it was a great joke that he was concluding Yom Kippur with a former nun.

Celia and I had a pleasant dinner, after which we washed up. I had asked Mark to call for me in the lobby as I didn’t want to disrupt Celia’s life too much. At nine-fifteen I went downstairs and waited for him.

At exactly half-past, a man came through the door with the doorman.

“Chris?” he asked tentatively.

“Yes. Hello.” I held out my hand and we shook.

“I’m Mark. Good to see you.”

I could tell by his face that he wasn’t disappointed. We went outside and he hailed a taxi.

“We’ll go somewhere for a drink,” he said, and we chatted until the taxi stopped.

“Somewhere” turned out to be one of those loud, packed, trendy places that I had only heard of. We sat at the bar, ordered drinks, and picked up our conversation.

“Is it top secret why a woman who looks as good in clothes as you do would want to spend her life as a nun?” he asked.

“It’s a long story and not very interesting. It has a lot to do with being orphaned at fourteen and coming from a devout family.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m a part-time college English teacher and a part-time volunteer for worthy projects.”

“Enlighten me.”

I did. I told him about Arnold Gold and his causes, about the building he had saved for the tenants. “So I’ve been helping them out for the last two months, three old people who won’t be budged, living in this spooky old building on the West Side, three people who love each other, hate each other, trust and mistrust each other, and ultimately, I’m afraid, can’t live without each other. Every time I say their names, I think I’m describing the great melting pot: Gallagher, Herskovitz, and Paterno.”

“Melting pot, hell. It sounds like an old-line New York
City election ticket, an Irishman, an Italian, and a Jew. Put ’em together, you’d probably have them running the city.”

“No more, I’m afraid. Mr. Herskovitz was just murdered.”

“Murdered. You’ve had quite a day.”

“You can say that again,” I said, reaching for my whiskey sour, which had just been placed before me on a cocktail napkin.

Of course, I had to tell him about it, which I didn’t mind doing, because talking about things often clarifies them for me. And he turned out to be interested, which was nice, and then later to be helpful, which was terrific.

“So you went down to take him to temple and you found him dead.”

“That’s pretty much it.”

“I guess he wasn’t inscribed for blessing in the Book of Life on Rosh Hashanah.”

“You mean the New Year?”

“Right. On both of those holidays you ask God to inscribe you for blessing in the Book of Life. My mother always said, when I was a kid and didn’t want to go to temple, that it was something like insurance. You went and put in your good word, and God gave you another year. At least, that’s the way I figured it when I was ten.”

“When is the New Year holiday?”

“Last week. Today’s Saturday, Rosh Hashanah was a week ago, Thursday and Friday.”

“Mr. Herskovitz didn’t go to temple those days.”

“He must’ve. It’s a package deal. You go on Rosh Hashanah, you go on Yom Kippur, and then, if you’re the average Jew, you don’t go the rest of the year.”

I thought it sounded a little like Catholics and Easter. “Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re right. He asked me for Friday and I couldn’t come.” I took my little date book out of my bag. Arnold Gold had insisted I write down all my mileage and other expenses involved in my volunteer work for some theoretical tax advantage, and although I really didn’t know what he was talking about, I kept the records
carefully. I opened the book to last week. On the Friday, September 21, rectangle I had written, “Church cleanup two miles.” “I was helping out in my local church,” I said. “He never said what he wanted me to come in for.” I felt a wave of sadness that I had denied Nathan Herskovitz his last chance to attend services.

“Don’t let it get you. If he’d really cared, he would have told you what it was all about. How old was he?”

“About eighty, but I never asked.”

“Anyway, if I had to make a choice, I’d go with Yom Kippur myself.”

The comment struck me as funny, and I laughed. “What happens on these special holidays?” I asked. “I’m afraid I don’t know as much about them as I’d like to.”

“Well, they blow a ram’s horn called a shofar. Not a beautiful sound, but very distinctive. Since it’s only on the High Holy Days, it’s pretty charged.”

“What do you pray for?”

“As I said, to be inscribed for blessing in the Book of Life, to be forgiven for your sins. I’m Reform, and we do the whole thing right in temple, but on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Orthodox actually go down to the river and cast their sins in it.”

“They what?”

“Figuratively, of course. My grandmother told me about it.”

Something came back to me with a rush. “Mark, when I saw Mr. Herskovitz a few days ago, when we made the arrangements for today, I remember he said that in the afternoon, maybe we’d walk down to the river. I assumed he meant he wanted to take a walk in Riverside Park, but that’s not how he put it. Maybe he wanted to do the river thing on Yom Kippur because he’d missed Rosh Hashanah. Do you think—?”

“Why not? A man that old might have had a very religious background, even if he wasn’t very observant now. He must have been an interesting person.”

“He was.” I suddenly felt the burden of Nathan Herskovitz’s
dying without having cast off his sins, of his wanting to make peace in his old age and failing. If only he’d told me how important it was, I’d have given up the church cleanup that day. “I wish I knew more about all this,” I said.

“I tell you what. If you come up to my place, I’ll show you the prayer book.” There was a mischievous glint in his eye, and I knew I was being tested and measured.

“I’d love to,” I said, thinking it would have to be quieter there than here.

“They’ll never believe this one in the office on Monday morning.”

We walked to where he lived. It was a mild night and it felt good to be outside, away from all the noise.

There was a doorman at Mark’s building, and the lobby was ultramodern. An image of 603 flashed before me. I hoped what happened to that building would not be repeated here. Time is sometimes very unkind.

Mark’s apartment left me almost breathless. The kitchen was a fantasy, and the living room a dream. There were sketches and paintings on the walls, furniture that looked too good to sit on, a rug with an abstract design that I hated to step on. Something that looked like a column from an ancient Greek building provided the touch of antiquity that I supposed balanced all the modern effects.

The contrast between this man and how he lived, and Jack Brooks and his life-style, was so striking, I could hardly see them sharing the same world. Mark was fairly tall and good-looking, his hair cut and styled so precisely that I couldn’t imagine it blowing. His suit was cut as though tailored for him, and perhaps it was, the fabric dark with the look of quality, the thinnest, subtlest pinstripe I had ever seen. The watch that he glanced at from time to time was large and gold and had one of those names that you see advertised in the best glossy magazines. Even his tie, which was many shades of blue, spoke of unobtrusive elegance.