“Excuse me, do you have a minute?” she asked.
He looked up at Pamela, startled. Then he nodded, signaling she should sit in the passenger seat.
“I think it might be better if we spoke out here,” Pamela said.
“It definitely would be better if we spoke in the car.” The man looked frail, but his voice boomed with easy authority. She wouldn’t have expected anything less of Stuart Cohn, two years the elder of Morris.
Pamela acquiesced, but not before making sure her smartphone was turned on. It didn’t hurt to have the GPS broadcasted out in the event that something happened, a lesson that came in handy several years ago when a scrape in the 88th almost turned out to be her last case.
When the doors shut, Stuart said, “I know what you must be thinking.”
“Why don’t you tell me.”
“That I must be a horrible person to walk away from my own brother’s funeral.”
“Should I think you’re horrible?”
Stuart Cohn lowered his head to the steering wheel. “Maybe. I know I do. But Morris was asking for trouble this last year. He went too far. Pushed too many buttons and made too many enemies.”
“Were you one of those enemies?” asked Pamela.
Stuart jerked his head up. He was frail, but the intensity of his green eyes was as formidable as it must have been during his prime in the family business. She wasn’t afraid of him, at least from a cop-to-potential-suspect standpoint. But from a
shul
-president-to-rich-congregant standpoint, she felt a small sting of disrespect.
“You can take the woman out of the precinct …” began Stuart, before he realized what he was saying. Then he clamped his mouth shut.
“It’s all right,” Pamela assured him. “I think the board knows the real reason I was appointed, and none of them like it much. Even Stephen wasn’t happy, and he was the one doing the appointing.”
They lapsed into silence. Pamela was patient and used to such lulls. They allowed her focus to sharpen, to think of follow-up questions. And in the meantime, the person across from her would squirm a little as he or she chafed from the strain of silence.
Stuart was a pro too, but even he succumbed. “We weren’t getting along near the end,” he finally admitted, “but there was a good reason.”
“What was it?”
“Morris lost all my money.”
“All of it?”
“Ninety percent, which for a multimillionaire is as close to
all of it
as one ever gets.”
“I didn’t know Morris was that rich,” Pamela said.
“The man liked to think he was a genius with money. So he got a little lucky with stock options and hedge funds! Until he wasn’t so lucky anymore.”
The pain on Stuart’s face was real and Pamela didn’t know what to say for a moment. It was terrible. And yet, it was so Morris to take his brother’s trust and abuse it mercilessly.
“There’s no way I can ever make it back,” said Stuart. In a smaller voice, he added, “I still haven’t told my wife.”
“So why should I rule you out?”
“Of course you would ask me that,” Stuart snarled. “Because you can never, ever take the precinct out of the woman. And if you must know, I was having dinner with my wife when
Morris was getting himself shot. I’m sure the restaurant will have a credit card receipt to confirm, should you feel the need to check.”
“I’m sure I will.” More charitably, Pamela then said, “I appreciate you telling me what happened.”
Stuart brushed aside her comment with his hand. “I know I’m not the only one he did this to. Find the person who got pissed off the most, you have your man. Or your woman.” He unlocked the car doors and laughed without humor. “The fairer sex is probably more capable of killing him.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because there are a number of them who were far angrier with Morris than me.” Stuart bobbed his head toward the passenger door. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to spend some time with people I actually care about and impart some news no one wants to hear.”
The car zoomed away as Pamela trudged back toward the cemetery’s entrance. Stuart Cohn was tough, but his hands couldn’t lie. They trembled on the steering wheel in such a way to confirm he couldn’t possibly have held a gun, let alone fire it repeatedly.
This time, Pamela was the one who was approached as she was fiddling for her car keys. “Stephen said I should speak with you,” said Morris’s widow.
Aline Cohn’s voice had caught Pamela’s attention when she gave a brief eulogy at the service. She barely opened her mouth but her words resonated all the way to the back of the hall, where Pamela had taken a seat. Now, with that voice just inches away, Pamela had the urge to block her ears. No wonder she’d stayed married to Morris the whole time, Pamela mused. Aline was one of the few people who could shout him down and even dominate the conversation.
“If this isn’t a good time—” Pamela began.
“There’s never a good time,” Aline snapped. “It might as well be now. I don’t have that much to say except that I gather you’re looking to find out who killed Morris, and my suggestion is to look amongst the harpies on the board.”
Pamela tried to suppress a smile, but Aline found her out. “This isn’t funny, young woman.”
“Of course not,” Pamela managed to eke out. “It’s just, well, your voice carries.”
“Do you think I care if the entire world hears what I have to say? So be it!” Aline’s arm gestures were almost as loud and frantic as her voice. “Morris was a terrible person. I wasn’t much better, but someone had to be an example to our children and grandchildren and he certainly wasn’t stepping up. I’m actually amazed he managed to charm so many women when he looked the way he did!” Aline shook her head, keeping a crocodile-like smile. “Especially that one.” She pointed her left arm at Lyssa Kamp, who was walking toward them.
“What the hell did you see in him?” yelled Aline. This time Pamela did cover her ears.
“I can’t believe you would ask me this,” said Lyssa, who moved to face her nemesis. “At Morris’s funeral! Aline, we can talk about this later—”
“Oh, I don’t think so. We’ll discuss this right now. Besides, Miss Rosenstein here is looking for who killed Morris. Why don’t you strike yourself off the list for her sake, even if it won’t be for mine?”
Lyssa drew back, stunned. Her right foot caught on a rock and she suddenly fell on her side with a loud thump. When she hit the ground, she cried, “Morris was the best lover I ever had. He had so much energy saved up because you kept spurning him!”
Aline didn’t say anything, her mouth frozen open in an oval. Lyssa didn’t move. The moment suspended in time before Pamela intervened, moving between the two women.
“Ladies, do either of you really want to get into a fight?”
“You stay out of this!” spat Lyssa. “I’ve wanted to tell that bitch for years what’s really been going on with Morris and me!”
At the same time, Aline rushed forward, and Pamela held out her hands to ward off the widow.
“I can’t stay out of this. Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing my job. And besides,” Pamela added, keeping her arms out toward each woman as a physical warning, “neither of you is really convincing me of any innocence in Morris’s death.”
“Is everything all right, Ma?” Morris’s oldest son, Barry, had come up behind his mother, and was now holding her back.
“Take your hands off me, Barry,” said Aline. “I’m fine. Let’s go home.” But before she moved, she had some final words for Pamela: “Don’t screw this up.”
As if Pamela needed another reminder of what was at stake. When the Cohns left, she held out her arm to Lyssa, who brushed furiously at her suit as she rose from the ground. And if Pamela thought Lyssa would be grateful, she was quickly proved wrong. “This suit cost three thousand dollars and it will be in the dry cleaner for weeks now!” There was no offer of thanks and no goodbyes as the older woman stormed away.
And Pamela was left to wonder what other bizarre scenes would play out as she removed the rock that was Morris Cohn’s murder and secrets inevitably began to slither out into public view.
* * *
The 81st Precinct hadn’t been Pamela’s first choice of station, but that was only because she grew up a middle-class Jew, unaccustomed to those whose fortunes fared far worse. She’d been seconded to the 20th Precinct on the Upper West Side as a rookie cop, spending her first five years dealing with the domestic concerns of Manhattan’s most suburban neighborhood during flush economic times. Pamela’s reeducation began an hour into her first shift as a homicide detective, when she and her partner were called out to a drug deal turned bad. It was on September 16, 2008, the day after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, and Pamela’s mind was on how the news would affect her husband. He’d switched to Goldman Sachs just six months before, but still had equity in his old firm. That was forty million dollars in stock options now gone up in a puff of economic-meltdown smoke.
The multiple murders, with needle shards strewn all over the floor and blood smeared on the walls, gave Pamela the necessary perspective. The economy would boom and bust and paper money could vanish, but there were people stuck in perpetual ruts, whose choices varied between selling drugs or doing them, having eight kids with six men or four kids with one, and a life expectancy of thirty-five if you were lucky. It was Pamela’s first case and it remained unsolved to this day.
She would have preferred to reopen that case than investigate the black comedy that was Morris Cohn’s killing. And she certainly would have preferred the long, hot shower she had to forgo when the doorbell rang, causing Marky to morph from sweet little dog into a psychotic bundle of screaming terror.
Pamela quickly threw on sweatpants and a T-shirt and answered the door. She wasn’t a stickler about appearance, but still shrank at the sight of her visitor’s carefully coiffed copper hair, elegantly structured pantsuit, and narrowed hazel eyes. A mere three hours after a funeral and Iris Tropper looked every inch the Wall Street executive she used to be.
“Sorry to bother you,” said Iris, sounding anything but. “I wanted to set the record straight.”
“I was just about to jump into the shower—”
“This won’t take long,” Iris interjected. There was a reason she had been appointed treasurer. She knew exactly where the
shul
’s money was supposed to be and where it actually was. Knowing that key difference, as well as being a strong foil for Morris’s more creative, if economically unsustainable ideas, kept the Great Neck synagogue alive. Barely.
Pamela opened the door and Iris came through in two strides, refusing a drink or a seat. Instead, she went straight to the point: “The
shul
is in terrible trouble. Morris left a hell of a mess and it’s up to you to clean it up.”
Now Pamela really wished she’d had time for the shower. “What do you mean?”
“We’re down to our last hundred thousand. I checked the ledger a few days ago, after he was shot, but with everything in turmoil I didn’t trust my own calculations. Then I checked again yesterday and was certain. The building fund is gone.” Iris’s face remained impassive, but Pamela caught a glint of fear in her eyes. A fear Pamela herself now felt, warring with a sense of anticipation.
“Gone where?” she asked.
Iris fished out a set of papers from her purse. “Take a look. There’s a shell company called AmFam Associates, based out of Grand Cayman, that’s listed twelve times in the last four months. Then the trail disappears.”
“Why didn’t you notice this before, Iris?”
The other woman stood quietly for a moment, then sank back into the nearest chair, crossed her legs, and arranged her posture so it was even straighter than when she stood. Quite a feat, Pamela marveled, but it was all defensive armor as Iris struggled with what to say next.
“I’ve asked myself that question a number of times,” Iris said, in a small voice completely unlike her regal bearing. “But that’s how Morris was. A fireball of bravado and charisma, whether or not you liked him—as too many did, or didn’t, like me.” Her eyes flickered away from Pamela’s at that moment, and her voice died away.
“How mutual was that dislike?”
Iris cast her head down, her face flushing red. “It’s so embarrassing to admit this, but there was a time when what was mutual was something other than dislike. Just once. It was awful. Just thinking about it now, when my husband hasn’t been well all year …”
“So why,” said Pamela, sensing there was a crack in the armor ready to be exploited, “are you being so up-front with me? To rule yourself out as a suspect?” A smile played on her lips. “Who’s to say you didn’t do the math before and let Morris know of your calculations?”
Iris didn’t blink. “You have every right to ask, but if that was the case, why am I here?”
“A lot of people like to play the hide-in-plain-sight game. You’re smart enough to do that. I’d say the entire board of directors is capable. So unless you have concrete proof you didn’t kill Morris—”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” Out came another paperclipped bundle of sheets. “These are hospital records. I always ask them to provide copies for insurance purposes, but in light of Lyssa’s ridiculous behavior at the cemetery, I was glad to have them on hand.”
Pamela took a look at the records, and her heart ached a little for Iris. There was her signature on the hospital’s log book, once to sign in at 6:35 p.m. on Wednesday, once to sign out at 9:50 p.m. Then a validated parking slip at the hospital fifteen minutes later, and, helpful for Pamela but likely embarrassing for Iris, a speeding ticket write-up at 10:45 p.m. just three blocks from her house in the adjoining suburb.
“My husband has perhaps a month, maybe two left,” said Iris. “The last thing I would do is jeopardize what time we have left.”
“I appreciate you being so thorough.”
Iris stood up, the armor now fully back in place. “You won’t when you have to contend with this money mess. Fortunately that won’t be my problem.” And out came one final slip of paper. “That’s my resignation, effective immediately. I won’t be part of this sideshow anymore.”
The long, hot shower Pamela finally had didn’t clear up her confusion. That would only come with a frantic phone call from Stephen Pascal, urging her to meet immediately.