Or at least, he thought he was a Jew. Sometimes he wasn’t quite certain. Because if he was a Jew, he sometimes asked himself, how come he hadn’t seen the inside of a synagogue in twenty years? And if he was a Jew, how come two of his favorite dishes were roast pork and broiled lobster, both of which were forbidden by the dietary laws of the religion? And if he was such a Jew, how come he allowed his son Alan—who was thirteen and who had been bar mitzvahed only last month—to play Post Office with Alice McCarthy, who was as Irish as a four-leaf clover?

  Sometimes, Meyer got confused.

  Sitting at the head of the traditional table on this night of the second seder, he didn’t know quite how he felt. He looked at his family, Sarah and the three children, and then he looked at the seder table, festively set with a floral centerpiece and lighted candles and the large platter upon which were placed the traditional objects—three matzos, a roasted shank bone, a roasted egg, bitter herbs, charoseth, watercress—and he still didn’t know exactly how he felt. He took a deep breath and began the prayer.

  “And it was evening,” Meyer said, “and it was morning, the sixth day. Thus the heaven and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day, God had finished his work that He had made: and He rested on the seventh day from his work which he had done. And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it, because that in it He rested from all his work, which God had created in order to make it.”

  There was a certain beauty to the words, and they lingered in his mind as he went through the ceremony, describing the various objects on the table and their symbolic meaning. When he elevated the dish containing the bone and the egg, everyone sitting around the table took hold of the dish, and Meyer said, “This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt; let all those who are hungry, enter and eat thereof, and all who are in distress, come and celebrate the Passover.”

  He spoke of his ancestors, but he wondered who he—their descendant—was.

  “Wherefore is this night distinguished from all other nights?” he asked. “Any other night, we may eat either leavened or unleavened bread, but on this night only unleavened bread; all other nights, we may eat any species of herbs, but on this night only bitter herbs…”

  The telephone rang. Meyer stopped speaking and looked at his wife. For a moment, both seemed reluctant to break the spell of the ceremony. And then Meyer gave a slight, barely discernible shrug. Perhaps, as he went to the telephone, he was recalling that he was a cop first, and a Jew only second.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Meyer, this is Cotton Hawes.”

  “What is it, Cotton?”

  “Look, I know this is your holiday—”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “We’ve got a killing,” Hawes said.

  Patiently, Meyer said, “We’ve always got a killing.”

  “This is different. A patrolman called in about five minutes ago. The guy was stabbed in the alley behind—”

  “Cotton, I don’t understand,” Meyer said. “I switched the duty with Steve. Didn’t he show up?”

  “What is it, Meyer?” Sarah called from the dining room.

  “It’s all right, it’s all right,” Meyer answered. “Isn’t Steve there?” he asked Hawes, annoyance in his voice.

  “Sure, he’s out on the squeal, but that’s not the point.”

  “What is the point?” Meyer asked. “I was right in the middle of—”

  “We need you on this one,” Hawes said. “Look, I’m sorry as hell. But there are aspects to—Meyer, this guy they found in the alley—”

  “Well, what about him?” Meyer asked.

  “We think he’s a rabbi,” Hawes said.

  The sexton of the Isola Jewish Center was named Yirmiyahu Cohen, and when he introduced himself, he used the Jewish word for sexton, shammash. He was a tall, thin man in his late fifties, wearing a somber black suit and donning a skullcap the moment he, Carella, and Meyer reentered the synagogue.

  The three had stood in the alley behind the synagogue not a moment before, staring down at the body of the dead rabbi and the trail of mayhem surrounding him. Yirmiyahu had wept openly, his eyes closed, unable to look at the dead man who had been the Jewish community’s spiritual leader. Carella and Meyer, who had both been cops for a good long time, did not weep.

  There is plenty to weep at if you happen to be looking down at the victim of a homicidal stabbing. The rabbi’s black robe and fringed prayer shawl were drenched with blood, but happily, they hid from view the multiple stab wounds in his chest and abdomen, wounds which would later be examined at the morgue for external description, number, location, dimension, form of perforation, and direction and depth of penetration. Since 25 percent of all fatal stab wounds are cases of cardiac penetration, and since there was a wild array of slashes and a sodden mass of coagulating blood near or around the rabbi’s heart, the two detectives automatically assumed that a cardiac stab wound had been the cause of death, and were grateful for the fact that the rabbi was fully clothed. They had both visited the mortuary and seen naked bodies on naked slabs, no longer bleeding, all blood and all life drained away, but skin torn like the flimsiest cheesecloth, the soft interior of the body deprived of its protective flesh, turned outward, exposed, the ripe wounds gaping and open, had stared at evisceration, and wanted to vomit.

  The rabbi now owned flesh, too, and at least a part of it had been exposed to his attacker’s fury. Looking down at the dead man, neither Carella nor Meyer wanted to weep, but their eyes tightened a little and their throats went peculiarly dry because death by stabbing is a damn frightening thing. Whoever had handled the knife had done so in apparent frenzy. The only exposed areas of the rabbi’s body were his hands, his neck, and his face—and these, more than the apparently fatal, hidden incisions beneath the black robe and the prayer shawl, shrieked bloody murder to the night. The rabbi’s throat showed two superficial cuts that almost resembled suicidal hesitation cuts. A deeper horizontal slash at the front of his neck had exposed the trachea, carotids, and jugular vein, but these did not appear to be severed—at least, not to the layman eyes of Carella and Meyer. There were cuts around the rabbi’s eyes and a cut across the bridge of his nose.

  But the wounds that caused both Carella and Meyer to turn away from the body were the slashes on the insides of the rabbi’s hands. These, they knew, were the defense cuts. These spoke louder than all the others, for they immediately reconstructed the image of a weaponless man struggling to protect himself against the swinging blade of an assassin, raising his hands in hopeless defense, the fingers cut and hanging, the palms slashed to ribbons. At the end of the alley, the patrolman who’d first arrived on the scene was identifying the body to the medical examiner as the one he’d found. Another patrolman was pushing curious bystanders behind the police barricade he’d set up. The laboratory boys and photographers had already begun their work.

  Carella and Meyer were happy to be inside the synagogue again.

  The room was silent and empty, a house of worship without any worshipers at the moment. They sat on folding chairs in the large, empty room. The eternal light burned over the ark in which the Torah, the five books of Moses, was kept. Forward of the ark, one on each side of it, were the lighted candelabra, the menorah, found by tradition in every Jewish house of worship.

  Detective Steve Carella began the litany of another tradition. He took out his notebook, poised his pencil over a clean page, turned to Yirmiyahu, and began asking questions in a pattern that had become classic through repeated use.

  “What was the rabbi’s name?” he asked.

  Yirmiyahu blew his nose and said, “Solomon. Rabbi Solomon.”

  “First name?”

  “Yaakov.”

  “That’s Jacob,” Meyer said. “Jacob Solomon.”

  Carella nodded and wrote the name into his book.

  “Are you Jewish?” Yirmiyahu asked Meyer.

  Meyer paused for an instant, and then said, “Yes.”

  “Was he married or single?” Carella asked.

  “Married,” Yirmiyahu said.

  “Do you know his wife’s name?”

  “I’m not sure. I think it’s Havah.”

  “That’s Eve,” Meyer translated.

  “And would you know where the rabbi lived?”

  “Yes. The house on the corner.”

  “What’s the address?”

  “I don’t know. It’s the house with the yellow shutters.”

  “How do you happen to be here right now, Mr. Cohen?” Carella asked. “Did someone call to inform you of the rabbi’s death?”

  “No. No, I often come past the synagogue. To check the light, you see.”

  “What light is that, sir?” Carella asked.

  “The eternal light. Over the ark. It’s supposed to burn at all times. Many synagogues have a small electric bulb in the lamp. We’re one of the few synagogues in the city who still use oil in it. And, as shammash, I felt it was my duty to make certain the light—”

  “Is this an Orthodox congregation?” Meyer asked.

  “No. It’s Conservative,” Yirmiyahu said.

  “There are three types of congregation now,” Meyer explained to Carella. “Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform. It gets a little complicated.”

  “Yes,” Yirmiyahu said emphatically.

  “So you were coming to the synagogue to check on the lamp,” Carella said. “Is that right?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And what happened?”

  “I saw a police car at the side of the synagogue. So I walked over and asked what the trouble was. And they told me.”

  “I see. When was the last time you saw the rabbi alive, Mr. Cohen?”

  “At evening services.”

  “Services start at sundown, Steve. The Jewish day—”

  “Yes, I know,” Carella said. “What time did services end, Mr. Cohen?”

  “At about seven-thirty.”

  “And the rabbi was here? Is that right?”

  “Well, he stepped outside when services were over.”

  “And you stayed inside. Was there any special reason?”

  “Yes. I was collecting the prayer shawls and the yarmulkes, and I was putting—”

  “Yarmulkes are skullcaps,” Meyer said. “Those little black—”

  “Yes, I know,” Carella said. “Go ahead, Mr. Cohen.”

  “I was putting the rimonim back onto the handles of the scroll.”

  “Putting the what, sir?” Carella asked.

  “Listen to the big Talmudic scholar,” Meyer said, grinning. “Doesn’t even know what rimonim are. They’re these decorative silver covers, Steve, shaped like pomegranates. Symbolizing fruitfulness, I guess.”

  Carella returned the grin. “Thank you,” he said.

  “A man has been killed,” Yirmiyahu said softly.

  The detectives were silent for a moment. The banter between them had been of the faintest sort, mild in comparison to some of the grisly humor that homicide detectives passed back and forth over a dead body. Carella and Meyer were accustomed to working together in an easy, friendly manner, and they were accustomed to dealing with the facts of sudden death, but they realized at once that they had offended the dead rabbi’s sexton.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Cohen,” Carella said. “We meant no offense, you understand.”

  The old man nodded stoically, a man who had inherited a legacy of years and years of persecution, a man who automatically concluded that all Gentiles looked upon a Jew’s life as a cheap commodity. There was unutterable sadness on his long, thin face, as if he alone were bearing the oppressive weight of the centuries on his narrow shoulders.

  The synagogue seemed suddenly smaller. Looking at the old man’s face and the sadness there, Meyer wanted to touch it gently and say, “It’s all tight, zaddik, it’s all right,” the Hebrew word leaping into his mind—zaddik, a man possessed of saintly virtues, a person of noble character and simple living.

  The silence persisted. Yirmiyahu Cohen began weeping again, and the detectives sat in embarrassment on the folding chairs and waited.

  At last Carella said, “Were you still here when the rabbi came inside again?”

  “I left while he was gone,” Yirmiyahu said. “I wanted to return home. This is the Pesach, the Passover. My family was waiting for me to conduct the seder.”

  “I see.” Carella paused. He glanced at Meyer.

  “Did you hear any noise in the alley, Mr. Cohen?” Meyer asked. “When the rabbi was out there?”

  “Nothing.”

  Meyer sighed and took a package of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. He was about to light one when Yirmiyahu said, “Didn’t you say you were Jewish?”

  “Huh?” Meyer said. He struck the match.

  “You are going to smoke on the second day of Pesach?” Yirmiyahu asked.

  “Oh. Oh, well…” The cigarette felt suddenly large in Meyer’s hand, the fingers clumsy. He shook out the match. “You—uh—you have any other questions, Steve?” he asked.

  “No,” Carella said.

  “Then I guess you can go, Mr. Cohen,” Meyer said. “Thank you very much.”

  “Shalom,” Yirmiyahu said, and shuffled dejectedly out of the room.

  “You’re not supposed to smoke, you see,” Meyer explained to Carella, “on the first two days of Passover, and the last two, a good Jew doesn’t smoke, or ride, or work, or handle money or—”

  “I thought this was a Conservative synagogue,” Carella said. “That sounds like Orthodox practice to me.”

  “Well, he’s an old man,” Meyer said. “I guess the customs die hard.”

  “The way the rabbi did,” Carella said grimly.

  They stood outside in the alley where chalk marks outlined the position of the dead body. The rabbi had been carted away, but his blood still stained the cobblestones, and the rampant paint had been carefully sidestepped by the laboratory boys searching for footprints and fingerprints, searching for anything that would provide a lead to the killer.

  “J,” the wall read.

  “You know, Steve, I feel funny on this case,” Meyer told Carella.

  “I do, too.”

  Meyer raised his eyebrows, somewhat surprised. “How come?”

  “I don’t know. I guess because he was a man of God.” Carella shrugged. “There’s something unworldly and naïve and—pure, I guess—about rabbis and priests and ministers and I guess I feel they shouldn’t be touched by all the dirty things in life.” He paused. “Somebody’s got to stay untouched, Meyer.”

  “Maybe so,” Meyer paused. “I feel funny because I’m a Jew, Steve.” His voice was very soft. He seemed to be confessing something he would not have admitted to another living soul.

  “I can understand that,” Carella said gently.

  “Are you policemen?”

  The voice startled them. It came suddenly from the other end of the alley, and they both whirled instantly to face it.

  Instinctively, Meyer’s hand reached for the service revolver holstered in his right rear pocket.

  “Are you policemen?” the voice asked again. It was a woman’s voice, thick with a Yiddish accent. The street lamp was behind the owner of the voice. Meyer and Carella saw only a frail figure clothed in black, pale white hands clutched to the breast of the black coat, pinpoints of light burning where the woman’s eyes should have been.

  “We’re policemen,” Meyer answered. His hand hovered near the butt of his pistol. Beside him, he could feel Carella tensed for a draw.

  “I know who killed the rov,” the woman said.

  “What?” Carella asked.

  “She says she knows who killed the rabbi,” Meyer whispered in soft astonishment.

  His hand dropped to his side. They began walking toward the street end of the alley. The woman stood there motionless, the light behind her, her face in shadow, the pale hands still, her eyes burning.

  “Who killed him?” Carella said.

  “I know the rotsayach,” the woman answered. “I know the murderer.”

  “Who?” Carella said again.

  “Him!” the woman shouted, and she pointed to the painted white J on the synagogue wall. “The sonei Yisroel! Him!”

  “The anti-Semite,” Meyer translated. “She says the anti-Semite did it.”

  They had come abreast of the woman now. The three stood at the end of the alley with the street lamp casting long shadows on the cobbles. They could see her face. Black hair and brown eyes, the classic Jewish face of a woman in her fifties, the beauty stained by age and something else, a fine-drawn tension hidden in her eyes and on her mouth.

  “What anti-Semite?” Carella asked. He realized he was whispering. There was something about the woman’s face and the blackness of her coat and the paleness of her hands that made whispering a necessity.

  “On the next block,” she said. Her voice was a voice of judgment and doom. “The one they call Finch.”

  “You saw him kill the rabbi?” Carella asked. “You saw him do it?”

  “No.” She paused. “But I know in my heart that he’s the one…”

  “What’s your name, ma’am?” Meyer asked.

  “Hannah Kaufman,” she said. “I know it was him. He said he would do it, and now he has started.”

  “He said he would do what?” Meyer asked the old woman patiently.

  “He said he would kill all the Jews.”

  “You heard him say this?”

  “Everyone has heard him.”

  “His name is Finch?” Meyer asked her. “You’re sure?”

  “Finch,” the woman said. “On the next block. Over the candy store.”

  “What do you think?” he asked Carella.

  Carella nodded. “Let’s try him.”

  If America is a melting pot, the 87th Precinct is a crucible. Start at the River Harb, the northernmost boundary of the precinct territory, and the first thing you hit is exclusive Smoke Rise, where the walled-in residents sit in white-Protestant respectability in houses set 100 feet back from private roads, admiring the greatest view the city has to offer. Come out of Smoke Rise and hit fancy Silvermine Road where the aristocracy of apartment buildings has begun to submit to the assault of time and the encroachment of the surrounding slums. Forty-thousand-dollar-a-year executives still live in these apartment buildings, but people write on the walls here, too: limericks, prurient slogans, which industrious doormen try valiantly to erase.

 

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