Run You Down (24 page)

“When was this?”

“The woman said it was about a week before she died.”

Levi sighs. “My work has been very demanding over the past several months. The company I work for is opening a location in Chicago and I have been traveling back and forth to supervise. The whole situation was very stressful and when I was home we mostly talked about Chaim, and made arrangements for when I was away again. I did not think the traveling would last for long. I thought it was a period we had to get through. And Pessie never complained. She seemed to be doing much better. She took care of everything at home. When something was broken she knew who to call to get it fixed. She never talked about her work and I did not ask. When I came home she seemed pleased to see me, but…” He hesitates a moment, then exhales heavily. “I thought she was happy with our life, but there was so much we did not know about each other. I wanted to know more about her. I
wanted
her to tell me what she thought. I assumed that would come with time. I never imagined our time was nearly up.”

I tell Levi that I will keep him informed as I continue reporting and he thanks me for taking an interest in his wife’s death. I type up what Levi said and start drafting a new article with the headline, “Dead Roseville Mother’s Secret Life.” I figure it’s worth at least sending to Larry since I don’t have anything from the State Police yet. I am a paragraph in when Saul calls.

“Can you pick me up the train station in Poughkeepsie this afternoon?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say. “Did you get my message?”

“Yes,” he says. “I am sorry I did not call you last night. I wanted to wait until I had confirmation. You are right. Aviva has been living in New Paltz for almost ten years. I spoke with her roommate Isaac yesterday. Something is wrong, Rebekah. Her roommate says he hasn’t seen her in almost a week. He is very worried. And I think he is the only person she has to worry about her.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

REBEKAH

Saul’s train from Grand Central is scheduled to arrive at 3:15
P.M.
I arrive at the old brick station a little early and sit waiting on one of the long wooden benches, seat backs at ninety degrees, forcing a kind of posture that feels as historic as the space. Almost no building in Orlando is more than fifty years old, and here below the soaring arched ceiling, red brick walls, molded columns, and iron gas lamps, I feel suspended in time. People have been waiting for trains in this room, according to the plaque on the wall, since 1888. I imagine waiting for Aviva here. Waiting a hundred years. Lights going off and on, sun up and down, people in and out, and me, sitting upright, elbowing away despair.

“Could you stop that?” says the man next to me. I look at him and he looks at my right leg, which is popping up and down like it’s plugged in. “You’re shaking the whole bench.”

I stand up. “Sorry.”

Saul’s train arrives on time.

“I had a friend run a criminal background check on Sam,” says Saul as we get into the car. “He was arrested for drugs about four years ago and got three months in jail.”

“One of the girls I talked to said he got transferred to state prison.”

Saul nods. “According to my source in the DOC, he stabbed another inmate. Repeatedly. The man survived, but his intestines were significantly damaged. He has to wear an ostomy bag for the rest of his life. Sam’s sentence might have been more like ten years, but apparently several witnesses testified that the man sexually assaulted Sam and he was defending himself from further attack. Wardens won’t always take something like that into account.”

“It doesn’t exactly seem right to call him lucky,” I say, quietly.

“No,” says Saul. “It doesn’t.”

We cross over the Hudson River, wide and white-capped in the wind.

“It’s pretty,” I say, aloud but to myself.

“Yes,” says Saul.

We ride in silence for a while, and within just a few minutes arrive in New Paltz. A sign announces the SUNY campus. College kids in hooded sweatshirts, backs bent beneath overstuffed backpacks, cigarettes and enormous mugs in their hands, trudge down a main street with hippie clothing and incense shops, a couple bed-and-breakfasts, a taco joint, a Starbucks, and a record store. It’s no use trying to pretend I’m not in agony.
What if she is there? Around the corner.

“I wonder if Aviva went to college,” I say.

“It’s possible,” says Saul.

As an adolescent, I sometimes imagined that Aviva had taken off to fulfill some wild, lusty dream of life. I assumed she’d never tell anyone about me because she’d all but forgotten. But I thought that before I had any idea about her life at all. Now, I know she didn’t run off to Mexico or Bali; she went back home to Brooklyn, then to Israel, then back to Brooklyn again, and then to a sleepy town upstate. Not exactly
Eat Pray Love
.

We turn right off the main drag and immediately see the flashing lights. And the black smoke.

“What’s going on?” I ask, although clearly Saul has no more information than I do.

“I don’t know,” says Saul.

I get out of the car and start running. I run past half a dozen gawking college students, three police cars, and two fire trucks before I see the yellow house. The front window is shattered and the wood above it turned to black, smoldering charcoal. Smoke rises weakly from inside the ruined center of the home. The black netting I’d seen over the bushes has melted, creating a row of monstrous little shrubs that look like creatures from hell. Red and blue emergency lights shine off the little pond in the yard, left, I assume, by the fire hoses. A stream of water pours off what’s left of the front gutter. I grab the first official-looking person I see, a pimply twenty-something in a jacket that says U
NIVERSITY
P
OLICE
.

“Is everybody okay?” I ask.

“They took one guy in an ambulance,” he says.

“Was anyone else inside?”

“I don’t know,” he says.

“Rebekah!” Saul comes running from behind with my coat.

“What happened?” I ask the university cop, my teeth chattering with adrenaline.

“Some kind of explosion,” he says. “I was over on Main Street and I heard a crash. Like glass breaking. I came running up the hill and the fire was pouring out of that window. It took them an hour to put it out.”

“Do you know the people who live here?” asks Saul.

Good question. I am completely off my game. I am not thinking like a reporter; I am not really thinking at all.

“No,” says the cop. “I don’t think they’re affiliated with the school.”

Behind him, some of the students who had been lingering across the street begin walking toward us.

“I’m a reporter,” I blurt out, grabbing my coat from Saul and pulling my notebook and pen from its pocket.

“Oh yeah?” he says. “Your friend is already here.”

“My friend?”

“From the school paper.
The Oracle
?”

“I’m from the
New York Tribune,
” I say. “From the city.”

“Wow,” he says. “You got here fast.”

“We sort of know them,” says one of the girls behind the cop. Her hands are plunged deep into the front pocket of her SUNY hoodie. Her bottom lip is pierced. “Aviva cleans our house. She’s really nice, right, Bree?”

The girl next to her—Bree, presumably—nods. “The cops said Isaac was the only one home.”

“Isaac?” Saul pulls out his phone. “Excuse me,” he says, and steps away.

“They said he was going to be okay,” says the first girl.

“What happened?” I ask.

“We heard a crash, like everybody else,” says Bree. “And then the fire.”

“Did you see a car or anything?”

Bree and lip-pierce shake their heads. “I was in the back of the house,” says Bree. “Somebody broke their kitchen window and spraypainted a swastika on the front door a week or two ago.”

“Aviva and Isaac are Jewish,” says a young man wearing a Mets cap.

“So’s half the school,” says lip-pierce.

“They’re different kind of Jews,” says Mets-cap. “They’re the black hat kind.”

“How do you know?” I ask.

Mets shrugs. “I’m from Marine Park. We have lots of them in my old neighborhood.”

“But they didn’t, like, dress funny,” says Bree.

“Not anymore,” he says. “Isaac was gay, too. I mean, so’s everybody, but he’s older. Maybe that has something to do with it?”

“Since when are you best friends with them, Matty?” asks lip-pierce, not pleased.

“We talked,” he says. “She’s nice. But somebody was definitely messing with them.”

“Did they say anything about who might have done the vandalism?” I ask.

“No. Isaac asked me to watch out. Let him know if I saw anything suspicious, but I didn’t.”

“So he was worried?”

“Definitely,” he says. “He got a motion-sensor light right afterward.”

“Did they call the cops?”

“I’m not sure,” says Matty.

“They’ve been rolling by a little more often,” says Bree.

“Do you mind if I get your names?” I ask. Look at Rebekah, acting like a professional.

Without hesitation, Bree, Matty and lip-pierce (Liza) provide first and last names, ages, and phone numbers for possible follow-up.

“Will this be in the
Trib
?” asks Matty. “My mom’ll love that.”

“Maybe,” I say.

“I wonder where Aviva is,” says Bree. “She’s been gone a while.”

“Yeah?” I say.

“I haven’t seen her car for at least a week, now that I think about it. Since right after the swastika thing.”

Saul returns and ushers me away from the students and the university cop.

“The hospital is very close,” he says. “I think we should go see Isaac.”

“Those kids said Aviva’s car hasn’t been here for a week.”

“Rebekah!” Saul and I turn and see Van Keller jogging toward us.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“I have a buddy at the State Police barracks nearby. I came up to talk to him about Pessie and heard this on the radio.”

“What happened?”

“It looks like somebody threw some kind of incendiary device—like a Molotov cocktail—in through the front window. There was some nasty shit in it. Acid, I think.”

“Acid?”

“Ate right through the firefighters’ boots.”

“Jesus.”

“Middle of the fucking day,” says Van. “
Crazy
brazen.”

“Did anybody see anything?”

“Staties are doing a canvass,” says Van.

“The woman who lives here is related to Pessie Goldin’s ex-fiancé,” says Saul.

“What? How do you know that?”

“Because she’s my mom,” I say.

Both Saul and Van look surprised.

“Your
mom
?”

“I never met her. She abandoned us. Then she reached out a couple months ago but she’s, like, disappeared. And so has her brother. Sam. The one I told you about—the one that’s dating Connie Hall’s son. I just talked to these neighbors and they said someone painted a swastika on the door a couple weeks ago and they haven’t seen her since. And Pessie, and now this…”

“Rebekah,” says Saul, putting his hand on my shoulder. I am talking too fast.

“I didn’t realize this case was … personal for you,” says Keller. He is unnerved.

“I should have told you,” I say. “I just … I didn’t know for sure. At first.”

“I looked up Sam Kagan last night,” says Van. “He has a criminal record. A
violent
criminal record. And you’re telling me he is your uncle?”

“I think so. But I’ve never met him.”

Van raises his eyebrows. He doesn’t believe me.

“She is telling the truth,” says Saul.

“I’m sorry,” says Van, “who are you?”

“Saul Katz,” he says. “Retired NYPD. Rebekah and I have worked together in the city. I do private investigations now.” Van looks mildly suspicious.

“Have you interviewed the man who was in the house yet?” Saul asks.

“No,” says Van. “This isn’t my investigation.”

“The man’s name is Isaac. He and Aviva—Rebekah’s mother—have been roommates for more than a decade. Apparently, Sam was living with them, on and off.”

“Sam Kagan was living in this house?”

Saul nods. “I spoke with Isaac last night. He was very concerned. He said he hadn’t heard from Aviva or Sam in a week. We are going to the hospital to see Isaac now.”

Van brings Saul over to his friends in the State Police cars while I take a photo of the burned house with my phone and e-mail it to the city desk. Minutes later, my phone rings.

“It’s Rebekah.”

“Rebekah, hold for Mike.”

I hold.

“Rebekah! Great shot. Give Cathy what you have from the scene. State Police radio said something about a possible domestic terror connection. Did you hear anything about that?”

“Not exactly,” I say.

“Well, give her what you’ve got. Can you stay up there tonight? Dig around tomorrow?”

“Sure,” I say.

“You can expense a hotel room.”

Mike transfers me to Cathy and I give her the quotes I have from Bree and Liza and Matty, and tell her that one person was taken away in an ambulance.

“I’m headed to the hospital now,” I say. “I’ll call the night desk if I get anything.”

Saul and I arrive at the hospital a little before 7:00
P.M.
, with Van just behind us. The guard at the information booth directs us to the third floor, and as we get off the elevator, two state policemen in plain clothes, badges at their waists, step on.

“How is he?” asks Van.

“He’ll make it,” says the taller Statie.

Keller’s badge gets us past the nurse and we find Isaac in the bed by the window. He is attached to several machines, tubes going into his nose, his arm, beneath his gown. His entire left arm and part of his chest are wrapped in white gauze, blooming with the red and yellow seeping from the wounds beneath. His eyes are closed when we walk in.

“Isaac,” says Saul.

Isaac opens his eyes, and sees me first.

“Aviva,” he says, groggy. “What happened to your hair?”

Saul looks at me.

“I’m Rebekah,” I say.

Isaac closes his eyes again and, perhaps I am imagining it, smiles slightly. He lifts his good arm. He wants me to take his hand. I do.