by Kaylie Jones
The car zoomed away as Pamela trudged back toward the cemetery’s entrance. Stuart Cohn was tough, but his hands couldn’t lie. They trembled on the steering wheel in such a way to confirm he couldn’t possibly have held a gun, let alone fire it repeatedly.
This time, Pamela was the one who was approached as she was fiddling for her car keys. “Stephen said I should speak with you,” said Morris’s widow.
Aline Cohn’s voice had caught Pamela’s attention when she gave a brief eulogy at the service. She barely opened her mouth but her words resonated all the way to the back of the hall, where Pamela had taken a seat. Now, with that voice just inches away, Pamela had the urge to block her ears. No wonder she’d stayed married to Morris the whole time, Pamela mused. Aline was one of the few people who could shout him down and even dominate the conversation.
“If this isn’t a good time—” Pamela began.
“There’s never a good time,” Aline snapped. “It might as well be now. I don’t have that much to say except that I gather you’re looking to find out who killed Morris, and my suggestion is to look amongst the harpies on the board.”
Pamela tried to suppress a smile, but Aline found her out. “This isn’t funny, young woman.”
“Of course not,” Pamela managed to eke out. “It’s just, well, your voice carries.”
“Do you think I care if the entire world hears what I have to say? So be it!” Aline’s arm gestures were almost as loud and frantic as her voice. “Morris was a terrible person. I wasn’t much better, but someone had to be an example to our children and grandchildren and he certainly wasn’t stepping up. I’m actually amazed he managed to charm so many women when he looked the way he did!” Aline shook her head, keeping a crocodile-like smile. “Especially that one.” She pointed her left arm at Lyssa Kamp, who was walking toward them.
“What the hell did you see in him?” yelled Aline. This time Pamela did cover her ears.
“I can’t believe you would ask me this,” said Lyssa, who moved to face her nemesis. “At Morris’s funeral! Aline, we can talk about this later—”
“Oh, I don’t think so. We’ll discuss this right now. Besides, Miss Rosenstein here is looking for who killed Morris. Why don’t you strike yourself off the list for her sake, even if it won’t be for mine?”
Lyssa drew back, stunned. Her right foot caught on a rock and she suddenly fell on her side with a loud thump. When she hit the ground, she cried, “Morris was the best lover I ever had. He had so much energy saved up because you kept spurning him!”
Aline didn’t say anything, her mouth frozen open in an oval. Lyssa didn’t move. The moment suspended in time before Pamela intervened, moving between the two women.
“Ladies, do either of you really want to get into a fight?”
“You stay out of this!” spat Lyssa. “I’ve wanted to tell that bitch for years what’s really been going on with Morris and me!”
At the same time, Aline rushed forward, and Pamela held out her hands to ward off the widow.
“I can’t stay out of this. Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing my job. And besides,” Pamela added, keeping her arms out toward each woman as a physical warning, “neither of you is really convincing me of any innocence in Morris’s death.”
“Is everything all right, Ma?” Morris’s oldest son, Barry, had come up behind his mother, and was now holding her back.
“Take your hands off me, Barry,” said Aline. “I’m fine. Let’s go home.” But before she moved, she had some final words for Pamela: “Don’t screw this up.”
As if Pamela needed another reminder of what was at stake. When the Cohns left, she held out her arm to Lyssa, who brushed furiously at her suit as she rose from the ground. And if Pamela thought Lyssa would be grateful, she was quickly proved wrong. “This suit cost three thousand dollars and it will be in the dry cleaner for weeks now!” There was no offer of thanks and no goodbyes as the older woman stormed away.
And Pamela was left to wonder what other bizarre scenes would play out as she removed the rock that was Morris Cohn’s murder and secrets inevitably began to slither out into public view.
* * *
The 81st Precinct hadn’t been Pamela’s first choice of station, but that was only because she grew up a middle-class Jew, unaccustomed to those whose fortunes fared far worse. She’d been seconded to the 20th Precinct on the Upper West Side as a rookie cop, spending her first five years dealing with the domestic concerns of Manhattan’s most suburban neighborhood during flush economic times. Pamela’s reeducation began an hour into her first shift as a homicide detective, when she and her partner were called out to a drug deal turned bad. It was on September 16, 2008, the day after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, and Pamela’s mind was on how the news would affect her husband. He’d switched to Goldman Sachs just six months before, but still had equity in his old firm. That was forty million dollars in stock options now gone up in a puff of economic-meltdown smoke.
The multiple murders, with needle shards strewn all over the floor and blood smeared on the walls, gave Pamela the necessary perspective. The economy would boom and bust and paper money could vanish, but there were people stuck in perpetual ruts, whose choices varied between selling drugs or doing them, having eight kids with six men or four kids with one, and a life expectancy of thirty-five if you were lucky. It was Pamela’s first case and it remained unsolved to this day.
She would have preferred to reopen that case than investigate the black comedy that was Morris Cohn’s killing. And she certainly would have preferred the long, hot shower she had to forgo when the doorbell rang, causing Marky to morph from sweet little dog into a psychotic bundle of screaming terror.
Pamela quickly threw on sweatpants and a T-shirt and answered the door. She wasn’t a stickler about appearance, but still shrank at the sight of her visitor’s carefully coiffed copper hair, elegantly structured pantsuit, and narrowed hazel eyes. A mere three hours after a funeral and Iris Tropper looked every inch the Wall Street executive she used to be.
“Sorry to bother you,” said Iris, sounding anything but. “I wanted to set the record straight.”
“I was just about to jump into the shower—”
“This won’t take long,” Iris interjected. There was a reason she had been appointed treasurer. She knew exactly where the shul’s money was supposed to be and where it actually was. Knowing that key difference, as well as being a strong foil for Morris’s more creative, if economically unsustainable ideas, kept the Great Neck synagogue alive. Barely.
Pamela opened the door and Iris came through in two strides, refusing a drink or a seat. Instead, she went straight to the point: “The shul is in terrible trouble. Morris left a hell of a mess and it’s up to you to clean it up.”
Now Pamela really wished she’d had time for the shower. “What do you mean?”
“We’re down to our last hundred thousand. I checked the ledger a few days ago, after he was shot, but with everything in turmoil I didn’t trust my own calculations. Then I checked again yesterday and was certain. The building fund is gone.” Iris’s face remained impassive, but Pamela caught a glint of fear in her eyes. A fear Pamela herself now felt, warring with a sense of anticipation.
“Gone where?” she asked.
Iris fished out a set of papers from her purse. “Take a look. There’s a shell company called AmFam Associates, based out of Grand Cayman, that’s listed twelve times in the last four months. Then the trail disappears.”
“Why didn’t you notice this before, Iris?”
The other woman stood quietly for a moment, then sank back into the nearest chair, crossed her legs, and arranged her posture so it was even straighter than when she stood. Quite a feat, Pamela marveled, but it was all defensive armor as Iris struggled with what to say next.
“I’ve asked myself that question a number of times,” Iris said, in a small voice completely unlike her regal bearing. “But that’s how Morris was. A fireball of bravado and chari
sma, whether or not you liked him—as too many did, or didn’t, like me.” Her eyes flickered away from Pamela’s at that moment, and her voice died away.
“How mutual was that dislike?”
Iris cast her head down, her face flushing red. “It’s so embarrassing to admit this, but there was a time when what was mutual was something other than dislike. Just once. It was awful. Just thinking about it now, when my husband hasn’t been well all year …”
“So why,” said Pamela, sensing there was a crack in the armor ready to be exploited, “are you being so up-front with me? To rule yourself out as a suspect?” A smile played on her lips. “Who’s to say you didn’t do the math before and let Morris know of your calculations?”
Iris didn’t blink. “You have every right to ask, but if that was the case, why am I here?”
“A lot of people like to play the hide-in-plain-sight game. You’re smart enough to do that. I’d say the entire board of directors is capable. So unless you have concrete proof you didn’t kill Morris—”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” Out came another paperclipped bundle of sheets. “These are hospital records. I always ask them to provide copies for insurance purposes, but in light of Lyssa’s ridiculous behavior at the cemetery, I was glad to have them on hand.”
Pamela took a look at the records, and her heart ached a little for Iris. There was her signature on the hospital’s log book, once to sign in at 6:35 p.m. on Wednesday, once to sign out at 9:50 p.m. Then a validated parking slip at the hospital fifteen minutes later, and, helpful for Pamela but likely embarrassing for Iris, a speeding ticket write-up at 10:45 p.m. just three blocks from her house in the adjoining suburb.
“My husband has perhaps a month, maybe two left,” said Iris. “The last thing I would do is jeopardize what time we have left.”
“I appreciate you being so thorough.”
Iris stood up, the armor now fully back in place. “You won’t when you have to contend with this money mess. Fortunately that won’t be my problem.” And out came one final slip of paper. “That’s my resignation, effective immediately. I won’t be part of this sideshow anymore.”
The long, hot shower Pamela finally had didn’t clear up her confusion. That would only come with a frantic phone call from Stephen Pascal, urging her to meet immediately.
“I thought we weren’t meeting up until progress was made on tracking down the killer,” Pamela said.
“Now it’s Morris’s and Lyssa’s killer.”
Marky barked twice when Pamela put down the phone. When her dog seemed to grasp the situation better than she did, she knew how much trouble she’d gotten herself into.
While Iris was spoon-feeding her alibi to Pamela, Lyssa Kamp had gotten herself killed in her car. A blunt object of some kind had smashed the woman’s head from the back as she moved into the driveway of her own house. Stephen’s nephew, who was married to a low-level patrol cop who supposedly knew how to get the right people to leak information at the right time, said the going theory was a carjacker. Stephen thought otherwise.
“What carjacker hides in a car at a cemetery and then stays down for the entire car ride?” he scoffed. They sat in Morris’s old office, which was now Pamela’s, except it was still full of her predecessor’s furniture, pictures, and files. No one, least of all Pamela, had had time to change anything.
“I suppose it’s possible,” Pamela conceded, “but it’s pretty unlikely.”
“And you shouldn’t have left the cemetery when you did. There were still a good half a dozen board members remaining. Any one of them could have jumped into the car to take Lyssa out.”
Pamela’s shoulders sagged. “The fight ended. Aline and her son had already walked back to their car. Lyssa was on her way to her car when I left. And need I remind you, Stephen, I used to be a policewoman, but I’m not anymore, and there were no police on hand at the funeral. There are limits to what I could and can do.”
“Now, Pamela, do you want to be shul president or not?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. Stephen sighed in dramatic fashion. “I suppose that’s the wrong question. But someone needs to lead.”
“Well, why not you? You certainly want to control this situation, Stephen.”
“Because the city wants to shut us down!” he cried. “Because Morris Cohn fucked us in the worst possible way. Iris is leaving because of his fiscal irresponsibility.”
“She told you she was resigning?”
“Of course. Iris called me before she went out to your house.”
For Pamela, this was the final straw. She laid out all of Iris’s documents on Morris’s desk. “You know what, Stephen, I don’t need this headache. I don’t want this responsibility. I just wanted to be a good Jew and a good volunteer, but this shul is full of vipers, most of all you. I’m done. Goodbye.”
“Wait a minute! You can’t leave!”
But Pamela was deaf to Stephen’s cries, storming out of the office and ready to escape to the refuge that was her crappy little car.
Until she realized she had miscalculated. And to correct her miscalculation, she would have to search Morris’s office.
It was foolish, but Pamela couldn’t go back into the synagogue while Stephen was still around. She could grovel later, if need be, but now was a time to let the man stew in his own power juice. And for what, when he didn’t even want to run things officially? No, Pamela realized, Stephen Pascal much preferred power from a small remove, twisting the puppet strings of those, like herself, who were just figureheads for the real leaders.
“Miss Rosenstein?” said a voice from behind.
Pamela snapped out of her increasingly rage-filled thoughts and found her composure. “Yes?” she asked. It was Stephen’s secretary, Marsha, who at six-foot-two towered over Pamela and, though twenty years older, moved with the quickness of a cheetah, judging by how short a time it took to catch up.
“There’s a phone call for you, and I saw you leaving—”
“I’ll take it. Thanks.” Here was Pamela’s ready-made excuse to return to the shul. “And make sure I’m not to be disturbed, especially by your boss.”
“Of course,” said Marsha, sprinting ahead.
Back in Morris’s office—she would never think of it as hers—Pamela shut the door and got to work on the drawers. The top one was unlocked, the rest were not, but latent lock-picking skills she had learned on a weekend training session during her rookie year as a cop came back, albeit with a significant amount of rust. She was certain everyone, especially Stephen, could hear her drawer ministrations, but she did not care. She had to get at whatever was inside the desk.
At first Pamela couldn’t contain her disappointment. The top drawer was filled with junk, tons of it, in the form of a ripped tallis, a set of tefillin with so much dust they had to have been almost as old as Morris, an ashtray full of moldy cigarette butts and half-empty matchsticks. Even if there could be some useful clues to glean, it wouldn’t help Pamela now. She didn’t have the weeks required for proper evidence and DNA testing at her disposal.
She was about to open the second drawer when the office phone rang again. Shit. Pamela had been so absorbed she’d forgotten about the call Marsha told her was coming. She picked up and tried her best to be polite, to tamp down her irritation.
“Is this Pamela Rosenstein?” said a timid voice on the other line.
“Yes, may I help you?”
“I’m not sure … but I hope so. I called the office and they said you’re in Morris’s office now, that you’ve taken over as president?”
Pamela held the receiver away from her ear, exhaled slowly, and then went back on the line. “Yes, that’s true.”
“I’m sorry it’s taking so long to get to the point, but it’s just … well, I was with Morris that day.”
“Which day?” Pamela knew damn well which day, but she needed confirmation.
“The day he was … the day he died.” The woman’s voice was like bro
ken glass. “I need to talk to someone and I gather you’re the person to talk to so …”
Pamela knew an opening when she had one. “Where should we meet?”
“There’s a coffee shop, Dinero’s, on the corner of Middle Neck and Northern. I’ll be there one hour from now.”
“How will I know what you look like?”
The woman laughed bitterly. “Believe me, I’m hard to miss.”
She rang off and Pamela held her head in her hands. Dinero’s was a five-minute drive and she had thirty minutes, tops, to conduct a search that should really take two hours. But it had to be done. She rifled through more endless junk until she reached the last drawer. The clock ticked and the lock could not be picked. Frustrated, Pamela whacked her purse against the drawer. There was a click.
And true to form, the effect was Open Sesame all the way. A cursory look revealed facts, figures, numbers. Pamela grabbed all that could fit in her purse and rushed out of the office, past a glaring Marsha, and back to her little car.
And when Pamela reached Dinero’s there was some crime scene tape waiting for her.
Since Pamela had no badge to flash and the authority of synagogue presidency didn’t carry quite the same weight as being a homicide detective, she didn’t get much out of the cops at the scene. One, however, did allow the tape had been put up just ten minutes ago, after a hooded figure walked into the shop, took out a gun, and fired three bullets into the head of an elderly woman with a significant facial deformity.
“Jesus Christ,” Pamela gasped involuntarily.
“Yeah,” said the cop, brushing back blond bangs from his eyes, “seriously cold shit.” His eyes narrowed on Pamela’s. “Why are you so interested, anyway?”
In that moment, Pamela elected to keep the phone call to herself. She’d tell the police on her terms, but not before. “Occupational hazard,” she allowed. “I used to work homicide in the city.”
“No fooling? Where?”
