Voice with No Echo
Page 10
“You’re not eating?” Aviles asked her.
“I had breakfast earlier,” she said. “But you? You need to keep up your strength.” She gestured to the stairs. The rabbi’s voice floated above them. He was still on the phone. It did not sound like things were going well. When he was reading scripture, his voice was musical and pleasing. When he was dealing with people—especially difficult people—it tended to get thin and hesitant. His wife seemed to hear it too.
“I swear,” she said, gesturing to the stairs. “If those men had been around when Moses was leading our people out of Egypt, the Red Sea would have parted and un-parted again before they made a decision.”
Aviles smiled. She seemed delighted she could get him to smile.
“Please. Eat.” She gestured a hand to his plate.
Aviles wasn’t sure he could. His teeth felt like they had forgotten how to chew. His stomach didn’t seem to recognize the taste of food. But he didn’t want to be rude. Eve Goldberg had always been so kind to him. She passed along clothing from her sister’s children to Noah and Flor. She got Maria an appointment with a good lupus doctor through her uncle, who headed a hospital in Broad Plains. She wrangled a scholarship that allowed Erick to attend sleepaway camp for two whole weeks last summer. But this problem here? This went well beyond kindness and they both knew it.
“I have an idea,” she said, pulling out her phone.
“Who are you calling?”
“Max Zimmerman,” she said. “If Mark is going to have Sam Lerner and David Stern and Ben Levine and Leo Hirsch over here this morning, he should have Max as well.”
“Missus, please,” said Aviles. “The señor is an old man. I don’t want to upset him.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “You need someone to speak for you. And I can’t do it alone.”
A thump on the window made both of them jump. A man in a beard and kippah held a clipboard in his hand.
“It’s the caterer for the kiddush,” she said.
Aviles had worked so long for the temple, he knew many Hebrew words and traditions. The kiddush was the prayer meal after Saturday morning services. Since the temple was celebrating a bar mitzvah today, the boy’s family would be paying for the kiddush and it would likely be substantial: lox and bagels and trays of hot appetizers.
“I need to handle this,” said the señora. “Why don’t you go about your chores for the morning—pretend it’s a normal day—and Mark or I will fetch you before services to talk some more?”
“Yes. Thank you,” said Aviles. “Only . . . can I ask a favor? Can you call my wife and tell her I’m okay? I ran without my phone.”
“I can do that,” she said. “But if I do, she’ll know where you are. And then perhaps ICE will too.”
“She won’t say anything,” Aviles assured her. “I don’t want her to worry.”
“In that case”—the señora held out her phone to him—“why don’t you take a few minutes to speak to her in private? I can wait.”
* * *
Aviles felt both better and worse after speaking to Maria and the children. Better, because he was able to reassure them he was okay. Worse, because Lissette still hadn’t come home. Not that he could call the police. Not with a gang watching his family. How could he protect them from inside the temple? Or worse, locked away in some detention center?
He tried to lose himself in the rhythms of work after that. Scrubbing the bathrooms. Polishing the chrome banister of the staircase that led to the sanctuary. Vacuuming the rugs. He heard Cantor Bloom singing snippets of prayers that made him feel both sad and full of wonder at the same time. Like a movie where you know the hero will die, but you watch and root for him anyway.
Aviles was mopping the floor of the side entranceway when the señora came up to him.
“Mark and the board are all in the conference room,” she told him. “They want you to go talk to them.”
Aviles leaned on his mop. His knees felt weak. He had a heavy Spanish accent and a fifth-grade education. What could he say to these powerful, educated men that would convince them to risk their temple—their reputations—on him?
He took a deep breath and tried to steady his nerves. “Have they decided?”
“I don’t think they can agree on the weather,” she said.
“So no—they haven’t. Which is why you need to help them decide.”
Aviles stared at his hands. “My English is not so good. I don’t know what to say.”
“Your English is fine,” she assured him. “Tell them about Noah. About Maria’s condition. About why you need to stay here for your family. They will understand family.”
Aviles washed his hands and face and finger-combed his hair. He smoothed out the creases in his borrowed Ralph Lauren green plaid shirt. His tongue felt like sandpaper as she led him to the conference room. The door was closed. Aviles could hear a murmur of voices on the other side. All of a sudden, the door flung open. Sam Lerner barreled out of the room, throwing his hefty arms over his bald head and turning back at the now open door.
“We’ll all go to jail, at this rate. This is mishegoss! Crazy! I cannot support it.”
Rabbi Goldberg ran after him, his wire-rimmed glasses bouncing off the bridge of his nose. Aviles felt embarrassed standing there. Like he was witnessing a family quarrel. Worse, he was the cause.
“Sam!” the rabbi shouted. “We’re talking about a few nights! Just until we can sort something out. Ben might be able to tap a colleague who can draft some kind of legal appeal. We owe that much to Edgar. To his family.”
Sam Lerner spun around. He didn’t seem to notice Aviles standing there. Or maybe he did. Maybe that was the point.
“He told us his lawyer already filed an appeal,” said Lerner. “It didn’t help. Why would ours? It’s enough for us to take care of our own people. In our own house.”
David Stern and Leo Hirsch nodded in agreement. “We can’t take on unsolvable problems like this,” Lerner continued. “It’s like”—he waved his arms, wound up with the effort—“like trying to empty the ocean with a tin can. Let his own people help him, if they’re so inclined. This is not our war.”
There was a moment of hushed silence. All Aviles could hear was Sam Lerner’s heavy breathing. Then came the sound of a cane slowly thumping down the hallway. A voice rose up from the direction of the sanctuary—thin and sharp, like a snapped branch in winter.
“He who can protest and does not, is an accomplice in the act.”
The men all turned their heads in the direction of the speaker. No one needed to guess who it was. Aviles recognized the Eastern European accent, the slight tremor in the vocal cords. Max Zimmerman shuffled toward them.
“Max,” said Rabbi Goldberg. “What are you—?”
“Eve called me, so I drove right over,” said Zimmerman. He and the señora exchanged a knowing glance. “What? I’m supposed to sit around watching reruns of Judge Judy while a man’s life is at stake?”
“We can figure this out without your input,” Lerner told him. “Or your quoting of the Talmud. Jewish law doesn’t apply here, Max. This isn’t about our people.”
“Not about our people.” Zimmerman mumbled and shook his head. He raised a bony finger. “As the great Talmudic scholar Hillel once asked, ‘If I am only for myself, what am I?’ ”
“Sam’s right,” said Leo Hirsch. He was a thin man with pendulous ears and a salt-and-pepper beard that only made his lean face look longer. “We can’t use Jewish teachings to solve a problem rooted in U.S. immigration law. If Ben can file a different sort of appeal, let him file it. If our congregation can raise money for legal and medical expenses, let them raise it. But these charitable deeds should be the extent of our involvement.”
Everyone began to talk at once after that. The rabbi. The señora. The fat man, Sam Lerner. Leo Hirsch, the man with the pendulous ears. Ben Levine, the attorney. Aviles couldn’t understand their words. They just blended together in one giant soup of English.
Rabbi Goldberg checked his watch and frowned. “The Cohens are here for the bar mitzvah? Already?”
“Maybe it’s the caterer,” Leo Hirsch suggested.
“He’s already in the building,” said the señora. “I saw him and his workers setting up in the kitchen.”
Rabbi Goldberg poked his head around the corner and stared down the short set of stairs to the wood-paneled doors inlaid with glass. A flash of red light from the other side of the glass lit up the rabbi’s pale, bearded face and reflected across the lenses of his wire-framed glasses. The rabbi’s placid, expectant smile vanished. He took a step backward. The pounding came again.
The rabbi turned his face to the board members, all hushed and expectant as children. He skipped over Aviles’s searching eyes and looked at his wife. Aviles saw something cross the rabbi’s soft features. Deep love. But also, deep need. God wasn’t the only one the rabbi turned to in times of stress. Rabbi Goldberg took a deep breath.
“I’m afraid we’ll need more than holy books for this.”
Chapter 15
The meeting in the conference room of the Lake Holly police station frustrated Vega. He felt like the case was getting away from him. Aviles was holed up—at Beth Shalom or somewhere else. Lissette was still missing. A house painter and a gangster—both of whom may or may not be connected to the case—were dead. And none of that got Vega any closer to figuring out what happened to Talia Crowley.
“I feel like the ME’s office is playing tag with us,” said Greco. “Everything Dr. Gupta found suggests Talia committed suicide, plain and simple.” Greco ticked the evidence off on his thick fingers. “The alcohol and Valium in her blood. The lack of evidence of a struggle. The absence of foreign DNA beneath her fingernails. Yet Gupta’s not calling it. She’s shifting this hot potato to us.”
“She’s not shifting,” Vega argued. “The science doesn’t support a hard and fast determination. This case is far from conclusive.”
“No evidence of a struggle seems pretty conclusive,” said Sanchez.
“She was doped up on booze and Valium,” Vega argued. “Maybe too doped to fight. And that’s not all,” he continued. “What about the housekeeper, Lissette? If it’s a simple suicide, where is she? How come her cell phone’s last activation was at ten p.m. last night in a part of town she doesn’t live in and can’t easily access?”
“She’s probably got a boyfriend who works at the Magnolia Inn,” said Greco. “For all we know, she’s shacked up somewhere with him right now. It may have no bearing on the case.”
“What about Crowley’s motives?” Vega countered. “That massage parlor Sergeant Burke and I uncovered up in Taylorsville? I checked with the county sheriff’s office. They’ve had a number of prostitution complaints about the place.”
Silence. Sanchez doodled on his notebook. Michelle played with her bracelet. Greco sighed heavily, the patient teacher who’d run out of patience.
“Look, Vega, if we get even a shred of evidence that Crowley’s possible—underlined, possible—extracurricular activities have any bearing on Talia’s death, I’ll be the first to let you run with it. Until then, this conversation is off the table. I want to finish this case, not have it finish me.”
Vega sat in the conference room listening as everyone took turns filling the others in on their part of the investigation. The air-conditioning unit rattled full-blast in the window behind Vega, circulating chilled air that felt clammy and humid. Vega jotted down notes and then stared at the two pictures of Talia tacked to the investigation board.
One was a candid shot, taken on a lounge chair without makeup. The other was at some political event with her husband. Vega preferred the candid shot, the way Talia looked straight at the camera. She was a naturally pretty woman with dark blond shoulder-length hair, large charcoal blue eyes, full lips, and a symmetrical face. But she lacked that preening self-awareness that so many pretty women have.
She’d been a paralegal in Crowley’s office. Then his mistress. Then his pregnant wife. She and Crowley had been married only four months when Talia miscarried. Vega couldn’t escape the question: Was Crowley relieved to move on? He was sixty—a hard-charging prosecutor with a socialite ex-wife and grown children, including a disabled son. Was he really looking to start over? With a paralegal from the wrong side of the tracks?
According to Sanchez, Talia Danvers Crowley was the daughter of a truck driver from western Pennsylvania. She worked two jobs to put herself through college and train as a paralegal. She’d had a brief first marriage—no children—in her early twenties. Friends said she was excited to become a mother—and devastated by the loss.
“Devastated enough to take her life?” asked Vega.
“That’s what we need to find out,” said Greco. “She’s got a sister named Lori Danvers who owns a pet-grooming business in Broad Plains. I want you and Lopez to take a ride over there, see what you can find out. I understand they were close.”
“We’re on it,” said Michelle, rising from her chair. Vega stayed seated.
“How ’bout Lissette?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we be focusing on her as well?”
“Me and Sanchez will be interviewing a friend of Talia’s who lives up near the Magnolia Inn. We’ll swing by the place, show Lissette’s picture around. If she’s got a boyfriend there, he’ll turn up.”
“We don’t know that she was actually at the inn,” Vega pointed out. “Only that the cell tower in that region was her last point of contact.”
“I’m telling you, Vega—she’ll show up. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Avileses know where she is and they’re not saying.”
When the meeting broke up, Vega signed out an unmarked brown Ford Taurus. He twirled the car keys around his finger, bunching them in his fist like brass knuckles as he walked into the station house parking lot with Michelle trailing one step behind.
Twirl—grab—jingle. Twirl—grab—jingle.
He was going to spend a whole goddamned day with the woman who’d helped him betray Max Zimmerman’s confidence. And more importantly, Adele’s.
“You want to drive to Broad Plains?” Vega asked her. “Or can I?”
“You can drive,” said Michelle. “I need to check my texts and see if Tyler and Donovan had any luck arresting Aviles.”
“Luck.” Vega snorted. “Right.”
Michelle grabbed Vega’s elbow and pulled him between two empty cruisers.
“Listen up, Jimmy—I’m only going to say this once. I’m doing my job. And you’re doing yours. So cut the bullshit.”
Vega straightened and stared at her, unsure of what to say.
“It’s not like anyone’s going to know,” she said.
“Know?”
“That you tipped off ICE. That’s what you’re worried about, isn’t it? You’re afraid Adele will find out.”
“You think I’m that much of a coward?” Vega felt like he’d been slapped. “You don’t know me at all, Michelle. Stop pretending you do.”
Vega stormed ahead. He was inside the vehicle by the time Michelle folded herself into the shotgun seat. The Taurus smelled of disinfectant and cigarettes despite the department’s no-smoking rule. Vega stuck the key in the ignition, punched in a code on the dashboard computer console, and nosed the car out of the lot.
They headed south to Broad Plains, a soulless collection of high-rises, strip malls, and highways that was also the county seat. The trip to the pet grooming store, Paws and Claws, should have taken twenty minutes, but their GPS showed an accident on the highway so Vega had to take the back roads, which added another fifteen minutes to the journey.
They didn’t speak. They were like passengers on an airplane who shared nothing but a destination. Michelle pulled out her cell phone and began scrolling through her text messages.
&
nbsp; “Yes,” she muttered, under her breath.
Vega’s heart sank. “Tyler and Donovan arrested Aviles?”
“Huh?” She looked up. “No. No word from them yet. I just won a year’s supply of dog chow.”
“You have a dog?”
“My landlord doesn’t allow dogs, much to my sons’ disappointment.”
“Then why—?”
“It’s my hobby,” Michelle explained. “I enter contests. It costs nothing and you can’t believe how much stuff I’ve won over the years. Tickets to shows. Cruises. Meals. Electronics.”
Up ahead, a road crew was repairing potholes. Traffic narrowed to one lane. A woman in a bright orange vest stopped them for oncoming traffic.
“Ever win a car?” Vega asked over the idling engine. That’s what he needed. Something to replace his aging pickup.
“No. But last week, I won a case of hot sauce.”
Vega laughed. “What are you going to do with a case of hot sauce?”
“Same as I’ll do with the dog chow—trade it for other things. Free haircuts. Manicures. Car tune-ups—”
“So, you do it for the economic benefits.”
“Not really.” Michelle considered the question. “I do it because when I win something, I feel lucky and special. Sometimes, it lasts for just an hour. But it’s a boost to get me through the day. Know what I’m sayin’?”
Michelle turned her gaze from Vega and stared out the side window at a landscape of acid-green trees that seemed to go on forever, broken only here and there by the rooflines of houses and church steeples. “When I was a girl, I used to enter my mother’s name in vacation contests. I wanted to get out of the Bronx so bad.”
Vega remembered the feeling, especially in summer when the streets would sizzle and the tar would turn sticky beneath his sneakers. The tenements were like ovens. People slept on their fire escapes and hung out on their stoops well into the night. Sometimes, his mother would take him on a long subway ride out to Rockaway Beach in Queens. The sand burned his feet and the waves were strong. Mostly, he ran beneath a spray of water from the fire hydrants that dotted the sidewalks. When his mother first moved them to Lake Holly with its crystal waters and green lawns, he felt like he was on vacation every day.