Run You Down
Page 19
“I don’t blame him.”
We agree to stay in touch and before I have time to think too hard about the conversation I’m about to have, I dial Roseville PD. Dawn answers and I ask for the chief.
“Him and Van just got in a big fight,” she says, her voice low. “I swear I didn’t tell him you were here though. Cross my heart.”
“I believe you,” I say.
Dawn puts me on hold and about twenty seconds later Chief Gregory picks up.
“Chief.”
“Hi, Chief Gregory, this is Rebekah Roberts from the New York Tribune. We spoke the other day…”
“I know who you are.”
“Oh. Great. Okay, well, I’ve been told by a member of Pessie Goldin’s community that one of her neighbors saw an unfamiliar pickup truck at her home the day she was found dead. He said he passed the license plate to you but never heard back.”
Nothing.
“Can you confirm you received a license plate number?”
“No.”
“Are you saying you didn’t receive it?”
“I’m not saying anything.”
“Well,” I say, “I’ve been given the plate number and my desk tells me it belongs to a man named Conrad Hall. Can you confirm that?”
“Nope.”
“Is it true that Conrad Hall is your stepbrother?”
There is a pause, and then the call ends. Chief Gregory has hung up on me.
I go into the bathroom to brush my teeth and as I am spitting into the sink I feel a kind of whoosh and suck in my ear. The ringing is gone. “Huh,” I say out loud, looking at myself in the mirror. The water sounds loud, like it’s pouring into my brain instead of the sink. For a moment I am dizzy. I close my eyes and shake my head, knocking my jaw around, opening my mouth extra wide, and hearing the pop of cartilage in my ear. The relief is powerful. Two months of tinnitus, gone, just like that.
I take out my notebook and dial Levi, who picks up after several rings.
“Yes?”
“Levi,” I say, “hi. This is Rebekah. From the Tribune.”
“Hello.”
“How are you?”
“Things have been difficult with Pessie’s family since your article came out. They are very angry.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“It is not your fault. I am the one that came to you.”
“Right,” I say. “Do you have a minute to talk? I’ve learned a few things that I thought you might want to know, especially before I put them in the newspaper.”
“Go ahead.”
“Okay, well, first of all it seems like Pessie was still pretty close with her ex, Sam Kagan.” I wait for a response, but Levi is silent. “I don’t know how often they saw each other, but I talked to a girl who used to live with Sam up in Greene County and she said she’d seen Pessie several times, including right after Sam came home from prison.”
“He was in prison?”
“Yes,” I say. “For drugs, I think. It sounds like he was pretty troubled. I spoke with a man who grew up in Roseville, and he told me that Sam had been a victim of … abuse.”
“Abuse?”
“Sexual abuse.”
“I see.”
“Did Pessie ever mention anything about that?”
“No,” he says. “But several months ago there was a story in the news about a Chassidish man in Brooklyn who was sentenced to life in prison for sexual abuse. Pessie followed the case very closely. Most of the people in the community thought the sentence was too harsh. Some people said the boy who testified was lying. We had some of her family over for Shabbos dinner just after the trial ended and there was a big argument. Pessie’s mother said that the boy was a drug addict and mentally ill and that she was donating money to the fund to defend the man in an appeal. Pessie screamed at her. I had never seen her so upset. She threw her parents out of the apartment and said that if they gave the man their money she never wanted to see them again. She said she would keep Chaim from them. I told her she was overreacting. I told her she should apologize to her mother.” He exhales. “No one mentioned a word about this Sam. Nothing!”
“I’m sorry,” I say again, because nothing else seems appropriate.
“Was she having an affair with him?”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “Apparently he’s gay.”
A pause. Levi lowers his voice. “Pessie once asked me if I knew anyone who was gay. I told her yes. My oldest brother. She asked if I ever saw him, and I said no, although that wasn’t because I didn’t want to—he joined the IDF when he was eighteen and after his service he moved to Indonesia. But we wrote letters, and I still get an e-mail from him now and then. She asked if I thought it was his fault that he was gay. I said I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure how she felt about it and I didn’t want her to think I was too … tolerant. Pessie’s family is more conservative than mine and you have to be careful. I thought maybe she was testing me. I don’t know why I did not just ask her.”
“Did she ever mention anything about work? I spoke with one of the women at the clothing store who said a man came in and they had a big argument. I think it’s possible it was Sam.”
“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.”<
br />
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 UNIVERSITY POLICE.
“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.”