Faye Kellerman - Stone Kiss

“I would not lie to you, Peter.” She noted disappointment in his voice. “How about a jazz club? More your style anyway. I’m sure the Lazaruses will baby-sit Hannah.”

“Fabulous.” Decker smiled in the dark. “That’s the spirit! Let’s opt for fun while our hearts are still beating.” He kissed Rina long and slow, feeling a tightening below the waist. But he decided to ignore it. “Good night, darling. I love you.”

“Love you, too.” Rina closed her eyes, was just about to drift off when she heard him speak.

“… off chance that Micky Novack will call tomorrow night.”

“Huh?” She was groggy. “Who’s Mick-oh, the cop. What did you just say?”

“I said, that there was a teeny, tiny off chance that Novack might call me tomorrow night. When I left him, he was investigating the possibility that Ephraim might have attended some twelve-step program meetings for Jewish addicts. If he gets a tip on that, he said he’d call me. Then maybe we’d go out together and interview the members of Ephraim’s chapter… if Novack gets a lead.”

“I just thought you washed your hands of the entire thing.”

“Only if he gets a lead, Rina.”

“But you’re not obsessed.”

“No, I’m not. Obsessed would be if I went out to the meetings without a lead and started asking questions myself. That would be obsessed. Do you see the difference?”

“Yes.”

“Are you just agreeing with me to shut me up?”

“Yes… I mean, no.” Rina lifted her head and kissed her husband’s lips. “Good night, Peter.”

She pulled the cover over her face. She fell asleep to the background noise of his muted grumbling.

A teeny, tiny off-chance call, huh?

Not that Rina had actually said anything. She hadn’t needed to say anything. She had simply given him one of those looks. The actual verbalized question had been: “Do I change the airline tickets?” Decker answered with an offended “No, of course not,” and left before she could see him blush.

They were walking on Broadway-Novack and he-passing the upper Seventies. The street was wide, but even so, cars were backed up from traffic light to traffic light, the area teeming with life and all the young people who frequented what the Upper West Side had to offer. There were scores of cafés and restaurants, lots of bars, and lots of stores-not the outrageously priced boutiques on Fifth or Madison, but drugstores and bookstores and liquor stores and grocery markets. The night was cold and damp, but Decker had brought along gloves and an overcoat-an old heavy wool thing that he had purchased twenty-five years ago when he and his first wife went to London on vacation in the wintertime: Off-season prices were all he could afford. The trip had been miserable, but he had been warm.

Novack was wearing a black ski parka. “While you were praising God at Shabbat services, I was working. Course that’s my job. I just wanted to assure you that we’re not all yutzes out here.”

Decker’s expression was surprised. “Why would I think that?”

“The toilet-bowl thing,” Novack said. “I had it checked out. There was recent splatter on the rim. I shoulda thought of it myself. Course it’s a lot easier to be smart when you’re working on one case as opposed to twenty, and your city ain’t under siege.”

“Absolutely,” Decker said.

“Still, it made me feel bad, you know. Got my ass in gear, and that’s not a bad thing. So I started calling some of the phone numbers on the pamphlet on the dead guy’s coffee table. The Emek Refa’im handout. Except no one was answering the phone. And then it dawns on me…” He knocked his head with his fist. “It’s Shabbos . They’re not using the phone. So I tried the good old-fashioned phone book… looked up the names.”

“That’s a lot of legwork.”

“Damn right! But the Knicks are playing again Sunday, so what the hell. I’ll watch tomorrow’s game. Now, it was very confusing because the chapters meet in the city, but none of the names have city listings. Then it hits me. They’re Chasids, probably live in Brooklyn like Ephraim did, but they meet in the city, because they don’t want anyone from home base knowing that they have a problem. Anonymity, you know. So I start looking them up in the Brooklyn directory, and I got lucky. Since they’re not answering the phones, I figured I’d take a drive south.”

Decker nodded. “What happened when you showed up at their doors?”

“They weren’t pleased, but I was discreet. I musta visited three, four men… one woman also. When this guy Ari told me he knew Ephraim, you coulda knocked me over with a spoon.”

“Did he know that Ephraim had been murdered?”

“Yeah, he knew. He was agitated about it. I don’t know who was asking more questions, him or me. Anyway, he was talking to me on the sly-can’t let the nice little Jewish wife know what’s going on-so he asked if I could meet him at some kosher restaurant around here.”

“He’s not afraid of being recognized at a kosher restaurant?”

“He says it’s not a problem. Nobody’ll know him because he’ll be wearing civilian garb. I take that to mean not Chasidic dress.”

“Civilian garb?” Decker asked. “He said that?”

“He did indeed. This whole thing about them being in the army of Hashem … I guess these guys take it literally.”

Marvad Haksamim meant Magic Carpet in Hebrew. The place had carpets all over the walls, carpets on the floor, and a big carpet tacked onto the ceiling, draping the eatery like a tent. Tivoli lights twinkled from the windows, and a couple of pictures of Jerusalem framed the doorway. But the restaurant did have linen napkins and tablecloths, and candles and a vase with a fresh flower decorated every tabletop. There was also a pretty decent wine list. Decker treated himself to a glass of Cabernet. Novack opted for a beer.

Ari Schnitman-whose civilian dress consisted of a black polo shirt, jeans, and sneakers-played with a glass of soda water. On his head was a knitted kippah instead of the usual velvet yarmulke or black hat. But because his hair was so short, the kippah could not be bobby-pinned on. It kept threatening to topple over any moment. Schnitman was in his early thirties, with a well-trimmed beard, an ashen pallor, and pale green eyes hidden behind wire-rimmed glasses. His features were small, as were his hands. Decker had met him while he was seated. He knew he was going to tower over Schnitman when they both stood up to say good-bye.

In the middle of the table sat a plate filled with appetizers-spiced carrots, potatoes with scallions and vinegar, olives, pickles, hummus, eggplant salad, and merguez-a spicy sausage that was dripping with oil.

Nobody was eating.

Schnitman was nervous. His voice was barely above a whisper. Decker had to strain to hear him over the background noise. “It’s not that I think this tragedy has anything to do with Emek Refa’im. I know it doesn’t. It’s just that this kind of thing… on top of it being horrible. I liked Ephraim; I really did. It’s just so devastating to morale.”

“Devastating how?” Novack asked.

“You know… to think that he might have slipped up. Ephraim had just celebrated two years of being sober. It’s terrible to think that a relapse not only ruined two years of hard work, but cost him his life.”

“You think it was a drug thing gone bad?” Novack asked.

“That’s what it sounded like. I heard that the police found him naked in a hotel room, shot execution style.”

Neither Novack nor Decker said anything.

Schnitman dropped his head in his hands. Then he looked up. “If you’ve never been chemically addicted, you don’t know how hard it is for those of us who are. I say are, because even though we are no longer addicted physically, we will always be addicted mentally. It’s a personality type. It really is a disease. It’s like AIDS in a way. It’s always there. But you learn how to live with it. And if you don’t treat it respectfully, it will kill you.”