Эд Макбейн - Lady, Lady, I Did It!

Island.

He had, since he had been a native Italian, born and raised in the tiny town of San Luigi, pronounced the name in perfect Italian. The name, if not the island itself, had been bastardized over the ensuing centuries, so that it was now pronounced “Ice-a-luh,” or sometimes even “Ice-luh.” This mispronunciation might have disturbed the island’s godfather had he been alive and kicking in the twentieth century, but chances are he wouldn’t even have recognized the place. Isola was thronged with skyscrapers above ground, tunnels below the surface. She roared with the thunderous pace of big business. Her ports overflowed with goods from everywhere in the world. Her shores were laced with countless bridges connecting her to the rest of the less frenetic city. Isola had come a long way from San Luigi.

Majesta and Bethtown reflected the English influence on the New World, at least insofar as their names honored British royalty. Bethtown had been named after the Virgin Queen in a burst of familiarity, the queen’s ministers having decided to call the place “Besstown.” But the man who delivered the new name to the crown colony was a man who’d lisped ever since he learned to talk, and he told the then-governor that it was the queen’s desire to call this place “Bethtown.” That’s the way it went into the official records. By the time Bess discovered the monumental goof, the name had already gone into familiar usage, and she realized she couldn’t very well reeducate the colonists, so she let it stand. Instead, she cut off the lisping messenger’s head — but that’s show biz.

Majesta had been named after George III, whose advisers at first thought it would be fitting to name the place Georgetown but who then decided there were too many Georgetowns around already. They dug into their Latin texts and came up with the word majestas, which meant, “grandeur” or “greatness” or “majesty,” and this seemed a proper tribute to their monarch. George later had a little trouble in Boston with some tea-drinkers, his majesty having diminished somewhat, by the name Majesta remained as a reminder of better days.

Calm’s Point hadn’t been named after anybody. In fact, for a very long time, hardly anyone at all lived on this small island bordering the larger island of Isola. In those days, wild animals foraged through the woods engaging each other in bloody battles — but the rest of the city nonetheless referred to the island across the River Harb as Calm’s Point. A few hardy adventurers cleared the woods of beasts, pitched a couple of tents, and began propagating. That’s the way to start a suburb, all right. After a while, when the tribe increases, you can petition the city for ferry service. In the event of a real population explosion, you can even hope for a bridge to the mainland.

Bert Kling was heading for Riverhead, where Mrs. Joseph Wechsler made her residence. There was, in actuality, no river that had its head — or even its tail — in that part of the city. In the days of the old Dutch settlers the entire part of the city above Isola was owned by a patroon named Ryerhert. Ryerhert’s Farms was good land interspersed with igneous and metamorphic rock. As the city grew, Ryerhert sold part of his land and donated the rest of it until eventually all of it was owned by the city. Ryerhert was hard to say. Even before 1917, when it became unfashionable for anything to sound even mildly Teutonic, Ryerhert had become Riverhead. There was, to be sure, water in Riverhead. But the water was a brook, really, and it wasn’t even called a brook. It was called Five Mile Pond. It was not five miles wide, nor was it five miles long, nor was it five miles from any noticeable landmark. It was simply a brook that was called Five Mile Pond in a community called Riverhead that had no river’s head in it.

The city was a crazy thing sometimes.

Mrs. Wechsler lived in Riverhead in an apartment building that had a large entrance court flanked by two enormous stone flowerpots without any flowers in them. Kling walked between the pots, and through the entrance court, and into the vestibule. He found a name plate for Joseph Wechsler, apartment 4-A, and pressed the bell. There was an answering click on the locked inner vestibule door. He opened the door and walked upstairs to the fourth floor.

He took a deep breath in the hallway outside the Wechsler apartment. Then he knocked.

A woman answered the knock.

She looked at Kling curiously and said, “Yes?”

“Mrs. Wechsler?”

“No?” It was still a question. “Are you the new rabbi?” the woman asked.

“What?”

“The new—”

“No. I’m from the police.”

“Oh.” The woman paused. “Oh, did you want to see Ruth?”

“Is that Mrs. Wechsler?”

“Yes.”

“That’s who I’d like to see,” Kling said.

“We...” The woman looked confused. “She... You see, we’re sitting shivah. That’s — are you Jewish?”

“No.”

“We’re in mourning. For Joseph. I’m his sister. I think it would be better if you came back another—”

“Ma’am, I’d appreciate it if I could talk to Mrs. Wechsler now. I... I can understand... but...”

He suddenly wanted to leave. He did not want to intrude on mourners. And then he thought, Leave, and the killer gets an edge.

“Could I please see her now?” he asked. “Would you please ask her?”

“I’ll ask her,” the woman said, and she closed the door.

Kling waited in the hallway. He could hear the sounds of an apartment building everywhere around him, the sounds of life. And, beyond the closed door to apartment 4-A, the stillness of death.

A young man came up the steps, carrying a book under his arm. He nodded solemnly at Kling, stopped just beside him, and asked, “This is Wechsler?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

He knocked on the door. While he waited for someone to answer his knock, he touched his fingers to the mezuzah fastened to the jamb. They waited together silently in the hallway. From somewhere upstairs a woman shouted to her son in the street. “Martin! Come upstairs and put on a sweater!” Inside the apartment, there was silence. The young man knocked again. They could hear footsteps beyond the door. Joseph Wechsler’s sister opened the door, looked first at Kling and then at the newcomer. “Are you the rabbi?” she asked.

“Yes,” the man answered.

“Will you come in, please, rov?” she said. She turned to Kling. “Ruth says she will talk to you, Mr. — what is your name?”

“Kling.”

“Yes, Mr. Kling. Mr. Kling, she’s just lost her husband. Would you please... could you kindly...?”

“I understand,” Kling said.

“Come in then. Please.”

They were sitting in the living room. There was a basket of fruit on the coffee table. The pictures, the mirrors were draped in black. The mourners sat on wooden crates. The men wore black yarmulkes, the women wore shawls. The young rabbi had entered the room and was beginning to lead a prayer. Ruth Wechsler broke away from the mourners and came to Kling.

“How do you do?” she said. “I am glad to know you.” She spoke with a thick Yiddish accent, which surprised Kling at first because she seemed like such a young woman and an unfamiliarity with English did not seem to go with youth. And then, looking at her more closely in the dimness of the room, he realized that she was well into her forties, perhaps even in her early fifties, one of those rare Semitic types who never truly age, with jet-black hair and luminous brown eyes, more luminous because they were wet with tears. She took his hand briefly, and he fumblingly shook hands, not knowing what to say, his own grief suddenly swallowed in the eyes of this beautiful pale woman who was ageless.