Blues in the Night (3 page)

four

The last time I was in a hospital was several months ago, to donate blood for the citywide drive run by Bikur Cholim (
ch
pronounced as in Bach), a Jewish organization that tends to the needs of the ill. The time before that was nine years earlier, when my Zeidie Irving, Bubbie G’s husband, had a heart attack and died while we kids were outside his room waiting for the nurse to move him from his chair to his bed.

Lenore Saunders was on the fifth floor in the South Tower. I walked through the lobby, steeling myself against the hospital smells and sights. Nurses carrying color-coded vials of blood. A gurney with a frail, elderly man with skeletal fingers and skin so transparent I could see the subway map of capillaries on his skull. A guy ahead of me, probably a messenger, was holding an oversized white cardboard envelope with a diagram of two breasts. I watched the breasts swinging back and forth as he bounced down the hall, someone’s fate in his indifferent hands.

On the fifth floor I found Lenore’s room, directly across from the nurses’ bay. I was about to enter when a voice stopped me.

“She’s not having visitors,” I was sternly informed by the heavy-bosomed, forty-something black nurse sitting at the large semicircular desk. “Doctor’s orders.” She returned her attention to the marching blips on one of the monitors in front of her and made a notation on a chart.

I walked over and read her name tag. Jeannette Plank. “We have some more questions,” I said. Sometimes the
we
works; sometimes it doesn’t.

Jeannette looked up. “You’re with the police, then.” Brown-black, almond-shaped eyes regarded me as they would a suspect spider, with reluctant deference and no fondness. “She was awake a few minutes ago when I checked on her, but Dr. Lomeli doesn’t want her upset.”

“Of course not. I promise I won’t stay long.” That earned an approving nod. “Lomeli’s her psychiatrist?”

“Dr. Lomeli’s head of internal medicine. Her psychiatrist is consulting on her meds.” The nurse checked her log. “Dr. Lawrence Korwin. I told that to the other detective, but I guess you people don’t talk to each other, huh? Did you want me to page Dr. Lomeli?”

I’d heard of Korwin. He was a big-name shrink. “Not right now, thanks.” I wrote down both doctors’ names. “How is Lenore doing?”

“Stable. Her vitals are much better today, but she’s still disoriented. Could be the aftereffects of the anesthesia and the sedation. They’re talking about moving her to a regular-care floor tomorrow if she continues to improve.”

That was encouraging. “Is Mrs. Rowan with her daughter now, Jeannette?”

“You just missed her. I made her go to the cafeteria. I don’t think she’s had a morsel since she got here early this morning. I told her if she didn’t take care, I’d have to get her a bed, too.” The nurse clucked.

I tsked in return. “Has anyone else been by to see Lenore?”

“A man stopped by ten, fifteen minutes ago and brought her these.” She tapped a tall, straw-beribboned glass vase of sunflowers on her desk console. “No one else today, at least not on my shift. I was about to put them in her room.”

“I’ll do that,” I offered. “Did he give his name?”

The nurse shook her head. “He was nice-looking, tall, brown hair.” She narrowed her eyes. “I’d put him in his late twenties,” she said, though I hadn’t asked.

“Thanks.” We were on the same team now. “I’ll go see if Lenore is up to talking.”

Jeannette handed me the vase. “Ten minutes,” she warned, pleasant but firm, collaborator turned nurse again.

Inside the room’s doorway I stood for a moment, listening to the oxygen whooshing through tubes into the injured woman’s delicate nose, watching her eyes flutter open and shut like butterfly wings, as if fighting sleep or welcoming it, I couldn’t tell. Attached to her thin wrist was an IV tube. More tubes ran from the receptors on her chest to the monitor above her bed that recorded her vital signs. Her long dark hair, splayed against the pillow, intensified the pallor of a thin, bruised face that hinted at uncommon beauty.

An ugly mustard-yellow plastic carafe on the nightstand filled with limp white daisies was the only spot of color in the room. There was no other place to put flowers. With apologies to the daisies, I set the towering sunflowers, unabashedly gaudy in their cheeriness, next to the carafe and read the attached card.

Feel better soon, Lenore. God bless.
Signed Darren Porter.

Not a family member or boyfriend, I decided. A coworker? Neighbor? Casual acquaintance?

Lenore’s blue-veined eyelids were doing that fluttering thing again. I sat on the chair next to the bed, wondering who Darren was and why he’d brought her flowers.

Glancing toward the doorway, I saw Jeannette at her desk. She was looking at me and holding up seven fingers. As in seven minutes left. If I ever needed someone to watch over me, I wanted Jeannette.

I turned to Lenore and said her name a few times, softly at first, then louder. When there was no response, I slipped my hand through the railing and touched her hand. She stirred.

“Lenore?”

She opened her eyes, dark brown pools flecked with amber, and moved her head slowly until she found me.

I scooted to the edge of my chair. “I’m so sorry about what happened, Lenore. I’d like to talk to you about it, if you want.”

“I want to talk to Robbie,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper. “Is he coming?”

“I don’t know.”

She sighed. “I don’t think he’s coming. He’s very angry with me.”

“Why is Robbie angry with you, Lenore?” Connors had warned me that Lenore was confused, and I was shamelessly ready to take advantage.

“You
know
why. Because of what happened. Everybody says it was my fault, but it wasn’t. You’re the only one who believes me.” She groped for my hand and tightened her slim, cool fingers around mine. “You do, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.” I wondered who she thought I was, and what I believed. “Do you remember trying to cross Laurel Canyon early Sunday morning, Lenore?”

She blinked a few times as if trying to focus. “They keep asking me that. Momma, and the detective. Robbie, too. Dr. K was angry. He said I don’t have to remember. He said I don’t have to talk about it if I don’t want to.”

Dr. K as in Korwin, the shrink. “Of course not.”

“I don’t even remember
being
on Laurel Canyon, but I guess I was.” She looked at me, a question in her eyes.

“You were in your nightgown,” I told her, eliciting a puzzled expression. “Was there an emergency that made you run out in your nightgown, Lenore?”

“I don’t think so. I wish I
could
remember,” she said, her wan smile embarrassed and mournful. “Sometimes it’s almost there, you know? And then it’s gone. Momma says it’s all the pills they’re giving me. Maybe I should stop taking them.”

“Hopefully, they’ll take you off the medication soon, when you’re feeling better.”

“I
want
to remember.”

“Maybe something frightened you, and that’s why you can’t remember. Your mind does that to protect you. Or maybe someone upset you. Did you have an argument, Lenore? Is that why you ran out?”

There was a flicker of something in her eyes. Then she stiffened, and the eyes went blank, as if someone had flipped up shutters and blocked the view. “No, nothing like that.” She released my fingers and placed both hands on top of the sheet.

I wondered what chord I’d struck and how to proceed. “Was it Robbie?” I asked, keeping my voice gentle. “You said he was angry. Or was it someone else who was angry?”

“Shh.” She put a silencing finger to her lips. “Don’t tell.
Promise.
”

“I promise.” I waited a moment. “Did you have a fight with Robbie, Lenore? Is that what happened?”

She sighed. “Robbie isn’t coming. He’s very angry.”

Back to square one. “Why is he angry, Lenore?”

“You
know
why. Because of Max.”

“Who is Max, Lenore?”

She narrowed her eyes and studied me, as if she were seeing me for the first time. “You’re not Nina.” She sounded surprised and a little fearful. The hands grabbled at the sheet.

I didn’t answer. Who were Nina and Max? Who was Robbie? A spouse? Boyfriend? Father? And what about Darren Porter?

“What’s your name?” Lenore asked.

“Molly Blume.”

“I don’t know you.” She said this as a fact, without suspicion or accusation.

“No,” I agreed.

“Are you a friend of Nina’s?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know Nina.”

“Why are you here?”

That was a good question. It’s a mitzvah—a positive commandment—to visit the sick, but God and I both knew that curiosity more than concern had brought me here. “I’m a writer, a freelance reporter. I read about what happened to you, about the accident. I wanted to know if you remembered any details.”

“Are you going to write about me?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Would that be all right?”

She glanced at the door and shifted nervously on the bed. “They won’t like it.”

“Who won’t like it, Lenore? Robbie?”

“I wrote everything down. Dr. Korwin says it helps, but it doesn’t, not always.” She eyed me, taking my measure. “You want to know what I wrote, don’t you?” she challenged, a trick question for the nosy reporter.

“If you’d like to tell me,” I said.

With a visible effort, she lifted her head an inch or two. “ ‘The truth doesn’t always set you free.’
That’s
what I wrote.” Her head dropped back against the pillow like a leaden weight.

The anger hadn’t been directed at me, then, but at hope that had seduced and betrayed. “Why is that, Lenore?”

“Because it’s my fault.” The small movement, the spent anger—both had exhausted her, and her eyes welled with tears. “Everyone says so, so it must be true, and I’ll never be free.”

“Why was it your fault, Lenore?”

“I thought I was going to have a second chance, but I don’t deserve one.” Her swollen lips trembled. “I’m so sorry!”

“Sorry for what, Lenore?” I sensed that she was retreating to a part of her mind where I couldn’t reach her.

“Ask Nina. Tell her I said.”

“Excuse me, but the doctor said my daughter’s not supposed to have visitors.”

The short, stick-thin woman entering the room was probably in her mid-forties, judging from the fine wrinkles around her eyes and mouth and the slight sag of the skin at her jawline and neck. Her hair was almost black, like her daughter’s, but bottle-harsh with red glints. She’d plucked her eyebrows into thin black semicircles that gave her a surprised, oh-my-goodness look.

She walked to the other side of the bed. “Are you okay, baby?” she asked, smoothing her daughter’s forehead. “You’ll have to come back another time, Detective,” she said, not looking at me.

“You’re a detective.” Lenore’s soft sigh, like her eyes, was filled with the hurt of betrayal.

“No, a writer,” I said.

“A
reporter
, you mean!” the mother said with loathing, as though pronouncing a four-letter word. She glared at me, twin dots of red on her cheeks. “You told the nurse you were with the police.”

“No, I didn’t. I’m not here to cause you or your daughter pain, Mrs. Rowan. I read about what happened, and I—”

“Get out!” the woman hissed with the venom of a rattler. “We don’t need prying eyes, and we don’t need you printing more lies in your paper. My daughter was almost killed, isn’t that enough? Have you no shame?”

It’s the moral dilemma I face in my line of work: my need and right—and the needs and rights of my readers—to know versus the right to privacy of the people whose lives and stories I’m examining and writing about. I face it over and over, and it never gets easier, or clearer.

The nurse filled the doorway. “Is there a problem?”

“No problem,” I said. “I’m just leaving.”

“And you can take those flowers with you! You can’t buy us with flowers!” Lenore’s mother turned to the nurse. “She’s not a detective,” she told her in a tattling-schoolgirl tone. “She’s a reporter.”

Ignoring a tight-lipped scowl from Jeannette, I took out a business card and placed it on Lenore’s nightstand, next to the daisies. Their droopy heads mirrored my mood.

“I hope you feel better, Lenore. You have my home and cell numbers. If you want to talk, day or night, just call.” I squeezed her hand and was surprised when she squeezed back.

“My daughter has nothing to say to you!”

Lenore’s gesture had told me otherwise. I felt three pairs of eyes watching me as I walked out of the room.

five

Wednesday, July 16. 9:27
P.M
. Corner of Carlos Avenue and Tamarind Street. A 31-year-old woman received a 150,000-volt shock at the hands of an assailant, who approached her on the street, said, “You . . . bitch, give me the money,” and then used a police-style taser on the victim’s right arm. (Hollywood)

Rafi’s is across town from where I live, on Pico Boulevard west of Robertson, in the heart of the west side Jewish community. It offers Middle Eastern cuisine and some traditional Jewish dishes, and sushi. I love sushi, and so do most of my friends and family, including Bubbie G, but my dad won’t try it. It’s the latest addition to kosher Jewish cuisine, right up there with Chinese, although of course we don’t have crab or other shellfish or anything else that isn’t kosher.

The restaurant has only a few parking slots. I pulled my used black Acura (preowned is the preferred euphemism) next to a white Suburban hogging one and a half spaces and wondered which car, if any, was Zack’s. I was twelve minutes late thanks to my two older sisters, Edie (the housewife/dance instructor) and Mindy (the attorney), who had been coaching me via a conference call about what to wear. My mom wasn’t involved. She’s a freer spirit, and she realized long ago that advising me would propel me in the opposite direction.

Which it did. I had put on and quickly discarded my sisters’ choice—a conservative navy suit and virginal white camisole I’d bought for a cousin’s bar mitzvah—and replaced it with a black Lycra skirt hemmed well above the knees and a short-sleeved, scoop-necked clinging white silk sweater that stopped just short of offering a peek at my Wonderbra-enhanced assets. It was July, it was hot. Rabbi or not, this was me.

With a last look in the Acura’s vanity mirror, I licked my Oh Baby M.A.C.–glossed lips and tousled my curls, wishing I hadn’t put off redoing my highlights. Then I locked the car and walked to the restaurant. Inside, I scanned the packed, dimly lit room, looking for the Zack Abrams I’d known, trying to imagine him twelve years older with thinning hair and a paunch, possibly with a beard now that he was a rabbi (I’d forgotten to ask Edie).

I didn’t see him. I
did
recognize a psychiatrist who had told me at the end of our first (and only) date that although we’d both exhibited high levels of anxiety, he thought the evening had gone well and was interested in seeing me again—probably to administer a Rorschach inkblot.

I’ve had worse dates. Like the depressed motivational speaker who didn’t stop talking about his ex-wife. Or the orthodontist who showed up at my door with toothpaste on his lips and offered to check my teeth for gum recession. Or the investment broker who ordered angel hair pasta and curled one strand at a time around his fork with intense deliberation until I wanted to strangle him al dente. I could write a book. Ron, by the way, was a great first date and an excellent boyfriend. He just turned out to be a shitty husband.

And then I saw him. Zack, I mean. He’d been talking to an attractive young blond woman at a table across the room, and his back had been toward me. When he’d turned around, our eyes met.

My heart thumped. It really did. He turned back to the woman and must have said something funny, because she laughed intimately. Same old Zack, I thought with a mix of disappointment and annoyance as he made his way around some tables. And then he was standing in front of me, taller than I’d remembered but no less captivating, fit and clean-shaven and Rupert Everett debonair in a black sports jacket, blue shirt and tie, and a black suede yarmulke much larger than the teeny colorful cotton ones a succession of girlfriends had crocheted for him. I’d never finished the one I’d been working on. Nineteen rows of tiny, intricately patterned stitches, and we were suddenly over.

We stood there for a few seconds, not saying anything, just taking each other in, the way people do when they haven’t seen each other in years. At least, that was part of it. For a few seconds I was back again in his parents’ Pontiac, felt the heat of his lips on mine. My face was flushed, my palms clammy. I wondered what I’d do if he leaned over and kissed me, but of course he wouldn’t, he was a rabbi now. Which was just as well.

“You look beautiful, Molly.” His gray-blue eyes stared into mine. “You haven’t changed at all.”

“Neither have you.” His thick, wavy jet black hair had a sprinkling of premature silver at the temples and sideburns that I found sexy, like the tiny lines that formed around his eyes and mouth when he smiled, which he was doing now. His smile was magic.

I don’t remember walking to our table. I do remember worrying that we wouldn’t have anything to talk about, but we ordered dinner and drank white wine—he sipped, I quaffed—and I found myself relaxing as we played catch-up over the sushi and miso soup and well into the main course.

“Have you seen . . . ?” and “Are you still in touch with . . . ?” and “Did you know that . . . ?” and “Can you believe . . . ?”

We had done well. We were doctors, lawyers, electricians, contractors, stockbrokers, plumbers. We were homemakers and teachers and politicians and CEOs. We sold medical equipment, homes, insurance, clothing, cars, and telecommunication systems.

Most of us were married and raising families. A few, including Zack, were still single or, like me, divorced. Zack didn’t mention Ron, but I assumed he knew about us. I wondered why he’d never married, whether he’d come close.

There were other names we didn’t mention, because I didn’t want to dampen the mood, and I suppose Zack didn’t, either. Names that hung in the air like invisible specters. Jonathan Kaymer, who succumbed to lymphoma a year after high school. Batya Glazer, newly married and pregnant, her parents’ only child, having a snack in a Jerusalem pizza shop when a suicide bomber detonated explosives, killing Batya and fourteen others. Mark Lodenberg, a stockbroker on the ninety-eighth floor of the south World Trade Center tower that terrorists had attacked.

And Aggie Lasher, my best friend, whose brutal murder five years ago continues to haunt me and pushes me to explore the caverns of the dark side of the mind, searching for answers that I have come to realize may not be there.

“I guess you’re the only writer in the group,” Zack said. “I read your work, you know. Your books and feature articles. I look for your byline all the time.” He chewed a roasted potato.

No further comment, so I assumed he was being diplomatic. His opinion shouldn’t have mattered, but of course it did. I’ve published numerous articles and one book and received my share of good reviews and some klunkers, along with varied comments from readers and friends (“You’re not Shakespeare,” one of my college classmates opined). I’m still vulnerable to criticism and wish I’d develop a turtle skin like Bubbie G, whose
“pfuff”
blows off hurtful comments like a dandelion’s fur.

“You’re very good, Molly,” Zack said. “I mean,
really
good. Your language, your style. The way you capture the essence of the people you’re writing about, the pathos.”

“Don’t forget my syntax,” I said, uncomfortable with his praise now that he was giving it.

He cocked his head. “Why can’t you take a compliment? Just say, ‘Thank you’?”

“Thank you,” I murmured, annoyed with the flush of pleasure working from my neck up to my face.

He studied me for a moment, chewing another potato. “So what are you working on now?”

I told him about the book I’d just finished, about the chromium-six piece, about the
Crime Sheet
, which made me think about Lenore. She’d been on my mind since I’d visited her yesterday, and I wondered how she was doing.

“What made you decide to write true crime?” he asked.

“I’m not sure.”
Aggie Lasher,
but that wasn’t something I wanted to go into. “Let’s talk about you. When did you decide to become a rabbi?”

“Sometime in my second year in Hakotel.” He saw my raised brow. “You’re surprised I went there?”

“I’m surprised you lasted,” I said, my tongue loosened by the wine. I smiled sheepishly. “Sorry.” Hakotel, which means “wall,” as in the Western or Wailing Wall, is an Orthodox, post–high school Jerusalem yeshiva for motivated, self-disciplined males interested in intensive, all-day Talmud study. Not exactly a match for the Zack who had flitted not only from girl to girl but from interest to interest. Often, though, when we were alone, I’d sensed a deeper, more serious side. . . .

“See, that’s what I missed most about you, Molly. Your subtlety.” He was smiling, too, apparently amused. “I think they saw me as a challenge.”

I decided to let that pass. “How long were you there?”

“Three years. I loved every minute. The learning, the rabbis, the guys, the environment. The falafel,” he added, probably fending off some smart-ass comment from me.

“The falafel’s great,” I agreed. “And the schwarma.” Ribbons of succulent lamb sliced off the meat as it’s roasted on a skewer over a grill. “I spent a year there, too.” Studying in a girls’ seminary, touring, like most of my classmates. “Funny that you and I didn’t bump into each other.” I wondered what direction my life would have taken if we had.

“So you know Yerushalayim,” Zack said, using the Hebrew for Jerusalem. His voice was wistful, as though he were talking about a lover, not a city. “It’s like no other place in the world, isn’t it? I didn’t want to leave.”

“Why did you?”

“My parents were pushing. Time to come back, figure out what to do with my life.”

After returning to the States, he’d received rabbinic ordination and had been assistant rabbi in a large synagogue near Philadelphia for two years when the B’nai Yeshurun position became available. He’d missed L.A., smog and all.

“Your parents must be thrilled to have you back,” I said. “And they must be
kvelling
.” There’s no perfect English translation. Proud as hell comes pretty close.

“So they tell me.” His smile was becomingly shy and self-conscious. “Although I get the feeling they’re still disappointed that I turned down law school, and they worry about the politics of being a rabbi of a large shul. Three hundred fifty members, according to my dad, is three hundred fifty bosses. Not counting the spouses.”

“Including the Hoffmans,” I said. “Ron’s parents? Ron and I were married, but we divorced two years ago.” Something Zack no doubt knew, but I felt a sudden need to make sure, don’t ask me why.

Zack nodded. “I was sorry to hear things didn’t work out.” He paused. “But I guess you and I wouldn’t be sitting here if they had.”

“I guess not.” For a second I wondered what he’d heard, and from whom—Ron, maybe? his parents?—and I had to stop myself from continuing down this familiar path that led nowhere. “So are you nervous about all those congregants?”

“It’s the challenge of the pulpit. I figure I’ll win them over one at a time. That should take me about, oh, give or take six years.” He flashed a wry smile, then speared a chunk of chicken cutlet. “Actually, this’ll be my first
Shabbos
officiating, so wish me luck. Rabbi Newman was there over thirty years, and the congregation adored him. It’s hard to compete with a legend.”

I had vague memories and several wedding-album photos of the pleasant, slouch-backed, gray-haired man who had officiated under my
chuppa
. Ron and I met with him once before the wedding and then two years later, when I received my get, the Jewish divorce that granted me freedom.

“I’m sure you’ll be fabulous, Zack. You have experience, and you have the perfect rabbi’s voice.” He did—deep and resonant and gravelly. “And if you have problems with the men, you can charm the ladies, just like you did in high school.”

He laughed. “My reputation was highly exaggerated.”

“You had a new girlfriend every three months,” I reminded him. “I lasted only two, by the way.” I could talk about it easily now, but at the time I’d been stung, had spent more nights than I care to remember crying myself to sleep.

“Then I owe you a month, don’t I? I’d like to make amends.”

His tone was light, but the way he was looking at me, as if I were the only person in the world, made my face feel warm. I’d been taken in by that look before, had practiced writing
Mrs. Molly Abrams
on the inside cover of my AP History folder on the strength of it.

“You just got back,” I said. “You’re going to meet tons of eligible women. Looks like you’ve already made one conquest.” I nodded toward the blonde sitting at the table across the room.

He half turned to see where I was looking, then faced me. “Reggie’s a member of the shul, a real estate broker. She’s trying to find me a house. We’re just friends, Molly.”

“Hmmm.”

“I’m not looking to play the field.” He was serious now. “I want to settle down, raise a family.”

“Sounds like a good idea. The shul board will approve.” That came out more cynical than I’d intended.

He looked at me appraisingly. “You don’t trust me?”

“You dumped me. One day we were an item, the next day it was over.” The words had come unbidden into my mind and had rolled off my tongue. I was surprised by the anger that pricked at me and wondered if this was why I’d come, to tell him.

He nodded. “I was an immature punk, but that’s no excuse. I’ve always felt bad about the way I acted. I’m really sorry, Molly.”

“Forget about it. It’s not like I think about it every day.” He had a forlorn, lost-puppy look I’d never seen before. My anger evaporated like air escaping a balloon, and I felt silly for having nurtured it for so long. But that’s what we do, isn’t it?

“I wasn’t ready for a relationship,” Zack said. “With the other girls, I knew there’d never be anything serious. With you—” He picked up his goblet and twirled the stem. “I was hoping we could start where we left off.”

There was something electric in the air. I think we both felt it.

I sighed. “You’re a
rabbi
, Zack.”

“You make it sound like a communicable disease.”

“I’ve had some unpleasant experiences with rabbis, Zack.” One, really, but I tend to generalize for effect. “It’s left me wary.”

“Don’t tar us all with the same brush. I teach and try to be a spiritual guide to people who need my help. That doesn’t mean I’m not a normal guy.”