“Yes. He’d had at least six people killed by the time he died, including his own brothers and two innocent civilians.”
“A very evil man then. So some homicides, we know, are justifiable, Jonah. Which means?”
“Yes?”
He smiled and said, “It means enough about you. We can talk about David now.”
If his questions had been a test, had I passed?
“Some things that he and I talked about can be shared.”
“Great.”
“He came to me last year, while I was still at Adath Israel, to enlist my support on a project. As you know, there is a great shortage of organs for transplant in the United States. I don’t know how it is in Canada, but very few people here sign their donor cards.”
“I don’t think it’s much better at home.”
“It’s even more true among the Jewish community, sadly, especially the Orthodox. There is great doubt and debate among them as to whether it falls within Halacha, the Jewish way, because we believe we are not supposed to change in any way the body Hashem gave us. It’s why the Orthodox oppose autopsies, and why their women wear clip-ons instead of piercing their ears. It’s why we don’t get tattoos. So if you won’t pierce an ear, or get a little tattoo on your tuchus, how can you cut open a body and take out its organs? How can you take the corneas? What if sight is needed in the afterlife? And on it goes. David saw first-hand how acute the shortage was and it bothered him. He wanted to drum up rabbinical support for donation. He knew how connected I am in that community so he came to me for help.”
“What kind?”
“We held a series of discussions with all the Orthodox rabbis in New England, one of them on Skype, if you want a laugh. We decided that to save a life was, if you’re old enough to remember the first
Star Trek
, the prime directive. It came above all other considerations and was therefore within Halacha.”
“That’s great. Has it helped?”
“It’s early days. Too early to tell if we’re having any statistical impact. But we had these made up and we’re giving them out at our shuls. In my case, my former shul. And I’ll promote it from my future pulpit.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a wallet thick with currency, receipts, credit cards and more. He slid from one pocket a laminated blue card that
said, “Halachic Orthodox Organ Donors.” Under that was his signature and a paragraph saying he was donating any and all organs needed and that it was within the Jewish tradition and endorsed by the Rabbinical Council of New England.
“HOOD,” Ed said. “That was David’s idea. He had no standing on the rabbinic side, but he gave a lot to get this going and came up with the idea of the donor card. He looks shy and bookish but he is tougher than people think when he thinks he is right. Which he generally is.”
“Is he tough enough for what he’s into now?”
“We don’t know what he’s into.”
“Are you sure?”
The Rabbi sipped the last of his wine and stood. “I’m afraid there’s nothing more I can tell you, Jonah. Anything else he might have told me as his rabbi, I think will have to remain confidential. If getting more information was the only reason you came to dinner, you may have to go home disappointed.”
“It wasn’t and I won’t. May I propose a compromise?”
“How does one compromise confidentiality?”
“Anything he told you while you were his rabbi is between you and him,” I said.
“Then where is the wiggle room?”
“Because you were no longer his rabbi the night he vanished. You had already resigned from the shul by then.”
He started to say one thing, stopped himself, started again and came up with, “What do you mean?” It was enough to tell me there was more.
“We’ve interviewed new witnesses,” I said, “and we’ve pieced together what happened to David.”
“That’s great!” There was a reason the rabbi had left theatre school. He wasn’t a good enough actor to sell that one.
“On his way home that night, two men tried to abduct him.”
“No!”
“They worked for an Irish gangster named Sean Daggett.”
“Have the police arrested him? Or these other men?”
“The other two are dead, Rabbi. They were shot to death last night.”
Now his face fell for real, no acting involved. “What!”
“I just found out. By accident, maybe by the hand of God, David was able to get away from them that night. He ran down Summit Path all the way to Beacon and was lucky to catch a trolley that was just pulling out. The driver confirmed it. Once David was safely away, he could have gone anywhere, but he got off at the very next stop. Washington Square. Right where you told me to get off. Now that was kind of risky for him to do. Those hoods were cruising around looking for him. So he had to have had somewhere in mind. Someone close by who would let him in.”
Shana came in from the kitchen then. “Dad, are you okay? I thought I heard something.”
“It’s about David,” I said. “I know he was here the night he disappeared.”
She looked away from me to her father, then at the floor. I liked the fact that she didn’t try to tell any lies.
“About seven-thirty,” I said, “maybe a few minutes after, he showed up at your door, out of breath, frightened. Now if you don’t want to tell me what he said, fine. I’ll find out anyway. I figured out this part fast enough. But at least confirm he got away. That he was unharmed. You couldn’t give his parents a greater gift than that.”
Rabbi Ed looked at his daughter and they made eye contact. Then he looked back at me and said, “Yes. For his parents, I can do that. He came here like you said. We were just cleaning up from dinner. I had never seen him like that. If I didn’t know him better, I would have thought he was having some kind of psychotic episode.”
“What about?”
“He didn’t tell us.”
“He wouldn’t,” Shana said.
“Right. He said it was for our own protection. All he wanted was a place to stay the night. But he made us swear not to say anything about seeing him, not even to his parents. He said that was for their protection too.”
“He didn’t say where he was going?”
“No,” Rabbi Ed said. “When I woke up in the morning he was gone.”
I looked at Sandy.
She said, “I woke up later.” It didn’t have the ring of truth.
“Did he have money?”
“About forty dollars,” Ed said. “I had a bit of cash that I gave him, about a hundred and twenty.”
“I gave him another eighty,” Shana said. “I had just gone to the bank machine.”
“So he had two hundred and forty dollars, no car, no clothes.”
“I gave him a coat when he left.”
“I thought you were asleep.”
“The night before, I meant. He told us he was going to leave early in the morning, so I made sure he had it before he went to bed.”
Okay, now she was bust-out lying.
“S
o what do you think?” Jenn asked. “Is he alive?”
We were back in my room. Jenn was reclining on one bed, which I was facing in a club chair. The second queen bed was barely visible under the papers we’d been searching through. I had just told her everything about the dinner and David’s flight to the Lerners’ house the night he disappeared.
“I think he is,” I said. “At any rate, it’s the assumption we should work on. David is alive and in hiding, trying to work out whatever mess he’s in. And all we know is it will take a while.”
“What mess doesn’t? So what do we do with this news? Do we share it with his parents? With Gianelli?”
“If you were his parents, what would you make of it? Someone tried to abduct your son but he evaded it and went on the run. Does that help you or hurt you? Let’s wait until we know a little more before we call them.”
“And Gianelli?”
“Let’s wait on him too. So what happened with Carol-Ann Meacham last night? Did she go straight home after work or was she mobbed by suitors?”
The smile left Jenn’s face and she suddenly looked sheepish. She reached behind her to straighten the pillows behind her back. Fluffed them a bit and put them back the way they’d been.
A sure sign she was blaming herself for something going wrong.
“What?”
“It all went fine at first. I matched her home number to an address in the phone book.”
“Where?”
“Roxbury.”
“Really? Gianelli made it sound like a war zone.”
“I wouldn’t go for long romantic walks after dark, but she lives in a real-estate pocket. The houses are big and in decent shape and apparently very affordable. Mostly because so many were foreclosures. They have signs up for a city program where you can get a fo-clo, as they are called, dirt cheap. Which Carol-Ann did, about six months ago.”
“What did you do, read her mail?”
“I did better. I found a neighbour across the street whose house is for sale. She was outside cleaning her garden and I chatted her up. Pretended I was interested in her house. Asked about the neighbours, the street. So Carol-Ann bought hers, did a little cosmetic renovation, and rents out the upstairs to help pay the mortgage.”
“Six months ago, you said.”
“Yes.”
“So she had a sudden influx of capital.”
“Yes. Anyway, I set up on a corner where I could see the house. She got there around quarter to eight, carrying her dinner. She was out of sight for about half an hour—the kitchen is at the back of the house—and then around eight-thirty she came to the front of the house and watched TV until a little after nine, when the TV light stopped flickering and she stood up. I think the phone rang and she paused what she was watching. I could see her shadow moving around, pacing, as if she were talking to someone on the phone. Two minutes later, she came out of the house and got in her car.”
“What kind?”
“White Camry. A few years old. So I followed her, and everything was fine at first but …”
“But what?”
“I realized I don’t know Boston as well as I thought I did. The Big Dig changed that whole part of the city. Plus she’s an unbelievably shitty driver. Never signalled, changed lanes at the last minute. Did unpredictable things. It was hard for me to stay on her and at this one light, she braked when it turned amber, then bombed through on the red. I had to stop and I never caught up.”
“You think she knew you were following?”
“No, I think that’s how she always drives.”
“Which direction was she heading?”
“North on Dorchester Avenue. Maybe to the Pike, maybe not. I wish we were at home,” she said. “I could call our contact at the phone company and find out who called her.”
“I know. It’s frustrating. You never realize how much of our work depends on contacts until you have none. Anyway, don’t be hard on yourself. We know where she lives. And she could have been going anywhere. There’s nothing to suggest it’s related to our case.”
“But you agree she knows more than she’s telling.”
“Absolutely. Let’s turn up the heat on her tomorrow. Drop in on her unannounced.”
“We’ve got also the congressman’s thing to crash at noon.”
“So much mischief to get into.”
“I’m sorry I blew it,” Jenn said.
“Forget it. As long as we keep moving forward, we’ll find something. And that something will lead to something else.”
She yawned and stretched, and I told her if she fell asleep there was no way I was carrying her next door. “I’m not falling asleep,” she said. “I’m just finding the inside of my eyelids extremely fascinating.”
“Give me your room key, then. If you fall asleep, I can crash there.”
“In a minute …”
And she was gone. Out. Her eyelids stopped fluttering and her breath started whistling through her nose. I sighed and started to sort out the papers on the other bed. I went through all the bank statements, credit card bills and phone bills again, stacking them in piles. Finding nothing but the beginning of a headache. I went into the bathroom and rinsed my face in cold water and laid a wet cloth on the back of my neck. Then I started flipping through David’s research papers. One explored the social and economic barriers that seemed to be keeping some groups, especially African Americans, from following through on the application process to get onto a waiting list. Another examined a group of live donors in India who had sold organs through brokers, to see how well they fared afterwards. In a city called Chennai, people sold kidneys primarily to pay off crippling debts or provide elaborate dowries. The organs would sell for ten or fifteen thousand dollars but the broker kept most of that. The donors received about a thousand U.S. dollars on average, which would help them in the short term but do nothing for their long-term prospects. Very few ever used the money to start a business or pursue an education. Many actually wound up worse off than before, because they didn’t get proper follow-up care and developed infections or other problems. The researchers had gone to Chennai and found living conditions unsanitary and access to medical care sporadic. But the thing that really jumped out at me was that Chennai used to be known as Madras.
I jumped off the bed and woke Jenn, waving the paper at her and telling her what I thought it meant. Once she was fully awake and with me, we decided that before we tried to trip up Carol-Ann or blindsided the congressman at the party, we would drive to Somerville, to the Madras Grocery, and see if any of what was going through my head could be real.
A
Red Sox scout comes to my hotel room to try me out. He says they’re thinking about me for second base. He’s a wiry old guy, a Johnny Pesky type. He likes my arm as I zip the ball across the room into his glove. Then he says we need more space to really see what I can do, and like that we’re in Fenway. The night lights are blinding in their towering banks. I’m in the dirt near second, firing balls to him at first. My arm is fine, really live, but I can’t catch the return throws. My right thumb and index finger are completely numb inside the glove and it won’t close on the ball. All the years I played such great defence, with such hunger and instinct for the ball, and now I drop every throw, the ball banging off the glove and into the ground. The old scout says, “Too bad, kid, you were looking good there for a minute, but you ain’t ready for the majors.” I ask for one more chance, one more throw, and he says, “Okay, but not from me. From him.” Standing at first, in shadows cast by the big light, is a glowering Boston reliever, their feared closer who throws ninety-five-mile-an-hour fastballs. He winds up and throws one at me with all his might and I freeze, my glove hanging uselessly at my side, as it burns through the air toward the bridge of my nose
.