Faye Kellerman: The Ritual Bath

He rolled down the window. Jesus, it was hot. Decker could already feel moist circles under his armpits and rivulets of sweat running down his neck and back. He hiked up his shirt sleeves and leaned a thick, freckled arm out the window.

“Scorcher,” Marge said. “Must be hell with your metabolism.”

“I always know when we’re about to get a heat wave,” Decker moaned. “The air-conditioning goes out in the car a week before.”

“A rape in Jewtown,” Marge muttered. “I’ve always thought of the place as sacrosanct. Sort of like a convent. Who’d rape a nun?”

“Who’d rape, period?” Decker said.

“Good point.”

Marge started the engine and eyed him. “You look exceptionally bad tonight, Peter.”

“Thanks for the compliment.”

Marge peeled rubber. “I sure hope this isn’t the first in a string of Jew rapes.”

Decker exhaled audibly, thinking the same thing. Some people had lots of animosity toward the Jews. Their place had been hit several times by vandals, but there hadn’t been any violence against the people themselves. Not until tonight.

“Let’s take it one step at a time, Marge. Maybe there’ll be a logical explanation for the whole thing.”

“I doubt it, Peter,” she said. “There never is.” She drove quickly and competently. “How’re your horses?”

“I just got a pinto filly,” he said, smiling. “A real cutie.”

“How many are you up to now?”

“Lillian makes six.”

“You must shovel lots of shit, Peter.”

“True, but unlike the urban version, it’s biodegradable.” He lit a cigarette. “How’s old Clarence?”

“Speaking of shit,” Marge grumbled.

“Oh?”

“He forgot to tell me about the wife, the two kids, and the dog.”

“The louse.”

“Stop laughing. That’s exactly what he was. As far as I’m concerned he’s dead and buried. You’re not up to date, Pete. My newest is Ernst. He’s a concert violinist for the Glendale Philharmonic. We’ve played some nice flute-violin duets. When I get good enough, I’ll invite you and the lucky date of your choice to a recital.”

“I’d like that.” He smiled at the image of the big woman playing such a delicate instrument. A cello would have seemed more in character. Not that she had any talent. The guy must really be hot for Marge, he thought, to put up with her playing, which Decker had always likened to a horny parrot’s mating call. He couldn’t understand how she could continue with music if her ears heard the same thing that his did. The only logical conclusion was that she was deaf and had maintained the secret all these years by artful lip reading.

Marge turned onto TWO HUNDRED TEN East, and the Plymouth grunted as it picked up speed.

Decker dragged on his cigarette, looked out the window, and surveyed his turf. Los Angeles conjured up all sorts of images, he thought: the tinsel and glitter of the movie industry, the lapping waves and beach bunnies of Malibu, decadent dope parties and extravagant shopping sprees in Beverly Hills. What it didn’t conjure up was the terrain through which they were riding.

The area encompassing Foothill Division was the city’s neglected child. It lacked the glamour of West L.A., the ethnicity of the east side, the funk of Venice beach, the suburban complacency of the Valley.

What it did have was lots of crime.

Bordering and surrounding other cities, each with a separate police department, Foothill’s domain could best be described as a mixture of small, depressed towns segregated from each other by mountains and scrub. Some of the pocket communities housed lower-class whites, biker gangs, and displaced cowboys, others were ghettos for blacks and migrant Hispanics, but most had a common denominator-poverty. People scratching by, people not getting by at all. Even Jewtown. These people weren’t the wealthy Jews portrayed by the media. It was possible that the yeshiva held a secret cache of diamonds, but you’d never know it by looking at its inhabitants. They dressed cheaply, buying most of their clothes at Target or Zody’s, and drove broken-down cars like the rest of the locals.

The station was twenty freeway minutes away from the yeshiva-a quick ride along a serpentine strip of road cut into the San Gabriel mountains. In the dark, the hillside lurked over the asphalt, casting giant shadows. The air in the canyon was hot and stagnant, but as the Plymouth sped along, a cool jet stream churned through the open windows.

“I’m glad you were available,” Decker said. “You do a hell of an interview.”

“Sensitivity, Peter. That’s why I work so well with the kids in Juvey. Being a victim of life myself, I know how to talk to people who have been thoroughly fucked up. Like you, for instance.”

Decker smiled and crushed the cigarette butt in the overflowing ashtray. “Is that an example of your sensitivity?”

“At its finest.” Marge’s face grew stern. “I’m not looking forward to this. The Jews don’t relate well to outsiders.”

“No, they don’t,” he agreed. “But rape survivors experience lots of common feelings. Maybe that’ll supersede the xenophobic inclinations.”

“Yes sir, Professor,” said Marge, saluting. She pulled onto a winding turn-off ramp marked Deep Canyon Thoroughfare, Deep Canyon . The “thoroughfare” was a two-lane road blemished with dips and bumps. The unmarked car bounced along for a mile, until the street turned into a newly paved four-lane stretch.

They cruised slowly for another mile, inspecting the street with cops’ wariness. Scores of local kids were hanging out in front of the 7-Eleven, sitting on the hoods of souped-up cars while smoking and drinking. Their raucous laughter and curses sounded intermittently above ghetto-blasters wailing in the hot night air. While the teenagers filled themselves with Slurpees and Coke, their elders tanked up on Jim Beam or Old Grand Dad at the Goodtimes Tavern. The place was doing a bang-up business judging from the number of cars parked in the lot.

In front of the Adult Love bookstore, a group of bikers congregated, decked out in leather and metal. The ass-kickers leaned lazily against their gleaming choppers and stared at the unmarked as it drove by.

As they headed north the activity began to thin. They passed a scrap metal dealership, a building supply wholesaler, a discount supermarket, and a caravan of churches. Poor people were always attracted to God, Decker mused. The area was a natural for a yeshiva-except for the anti-Semitism.

The street narrowed and worked its way into the hillside, the landscape changing abruptly from urban to rural. Heavy thickets of brush and trees flanked the Plymouth, occasionally scraping its sides as it meandered through the mountains. Two miles farther was another turn-off, then the property line of Yeshivat Ohavei Torah.

Marge pulled the car onto a dirt clearing and parked. Decker stepped outside, took a deep breath, and stretched. The dry air singed his throat.

“Gate should be open,” Marge said. “The place is all walled in, but they always leave the gate open.”

“They’ve been vandalized at least twice and you can’t get them to put a lock on the damn gate.” Decker shook the wire fence. “This is just a psychological barrier, anyway. Wouldn’t stop a serious intruder.”

He pushed open the gate and walked inside. “Let’s get on with it.”

The grounds of the yeshiva were well tended but sparsely planted. A huge, flat expanse of lawn was surrounded by low brush and several flat-roofed buildings. Across the lawn, directly in their field of vision, was the largest-a two-story cube of cement. To its right were a stucco annex off the main building, a nest of tiny tract homes, and a gravel lot speckled with cars, to its left, two smaller bungalow-like structures. Behind the houses and buildings were dense woodlands rising to barren, mountainous terrain.